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woman‘. I see this as a gender and class issue which I suggest contributes
to the “watch your back” culture and the game playing of the drama
triangle in the ward setting.
I have shown historically the psychosocial support and hygiene needs
appear to have lower legitimacy in the ward so that caring functions seem
to have little social and cultural capital. This could in part be related to
historical class differences where working class women carried out such
care and more educated middle class nurses administered and co-
ordinated care. Whether it is acknowledged or not nursing is not one
homogenous grouping; it is still hierarchical with grades of staff that go
back to the earliest hospital structures and with class distinctions which
tend to be overlooked. To describe the image and status of nursing as
purely a struggle between the educated lady nurses and the working class
women is clearly too simplistic and generalised an analysis because the
field contains the complexity of all of the capitals (symbolic, economic,
political etc), as well as the wider fields of power, yet it is in part influential.
It may relate to the preference for nurses reflecting orally rather than in
written form which forms the basis of the next chapter.
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