PUBLIC LECTURE: "About Time: Market-based Strategies for Managing Nursing Work"

Abstract: This paper is about how managers in health care are developing strategies to abstract and control nursing care time. Based on semi-structured interviews with nurses in Canada and the United States, it argues that these strategies are changing the nature of care work in ways that are detrimental to both patients and providers. The paper also discusses how nurses are resisting these strategies. They are assisted in these efforts by the unpredictable timing of illnesses, recovery and death. Some implications of the conflicts over ‘care’ for other health professionals, including social workers, are also briefly addressed.

Profile: Dr. Hugh Armstrong is a Professor in the School of Social Work and in the Institute of Political Economy at Carleton University in Ottawa.

He has published articles on privatization in health care, on the re-organization of work, and on state workers. With Pat Armstrong, he has written widely on women and work and on health care. Among their books are Theorizing Women’s Work (1990), The Double Ghetto: Canadian Women and Their Segregated Work (Third Edition, 1994), Wasting Away: The Undermining of Canadian Health Care (Second Edition, 2003), and Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience (1998). They have also co-authored several articles and reports, including a paper on health human resources for the recent Romanow Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada. He served on the Board of Directors for the Ottawa Community Care Access Centre from 1999 until 2002. He now serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Aging of Ottawa and on the Champlain District Steering Committee for the Local Health Integration Networks initiative.

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