NURSING A GRIEVANCE - WOMEN DOCTORS AND NURSES

The literature on doctor-nurse relations still mostly presumes that th e doctor is male and the nurse female. While there has been some inter est in male nurses, especially gay ones, very little has been said abo ut the relationship between nurses and women doctors. This paper draws on life history interviews with women doctors, and focus groups of nu rses to explore the relationship. Nurses of both sexes were more posit ive about women doctors than vice versa but the two versions mesh: nur ses prefer working with women doctors because the latter are less dema nding and have a more consultative style; the doctors, however, resent what they see as the compromises they have to mal;e. Some of the tens ions between female doctors and, in particular, female nurses, derive from the deliberate construction of 'modern' medical and nursing ident ities as normatively masculine and feminine and the impossibility for women doctors of playing the 'doctor-nurse game'. Woman doctors wee ex pected be a blend of nurse and doctor and hence faced problems differe ntiating themselves from nurses; currently nurses are facing similar e xpectations and are disturbed to find themselves portrayed as failed d octors. Both groups have constituted themselves in relation to shiftin g meanings of gender and class which are linked in complex and subtle ways. While there are tensions, there are also indications that a high proportion of the women doctors have negotiated, or been forced to ne gotiate, more egalitarian working relationships with nurses than have their male colleagues.