Sjukvårdens industrialisering : Mellan curing och caring –sjuksköterskearbetets omvandling

• Main Author: Strömberg, Helen
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Umeå universitet, Ekonomisk historia 2004
• Subjects: Economic history; care act; care system; care work; caring; curing; gender; gender division; gender system; hospitals; nursing; institutions; Sweden; Ekonomisk historia
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-257; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:isbn:91-7305-675-8

This dissertation examines changes in the Swedish health care system during the period 1962-2000. During this period, three legislative changes affected the development of the health care system. Firstly, the Health care act of 1962 that increased the county councils responsibility for the health care. Secondly, the Health care act of 1983, which resulted in a new definition of concept health at the same time as it changed the hospitals responsibility for care and illness. Thirdly, from 1992 to 1995, three reforms changed the hospitals position in the health care system. Together with the general technological development of the health care sector, these three legislative changes have led to new way of producing care as well as it has created new jobs, new work specialities and it has also effect the gender division in work. Women have always dominated the work in the health care sector. The way of care production have however also created new jobs mainly consisting of technological work assignments that have better status than traditional care work with the patients. The new technological jobs are furthermore primarily occupied by men, which leads to a organizational development than reemphasizes the hierarchical structure of the health care sector, where women work in the lower position and men in the upper positions. This development is also evident when nurses begin to work with technology. This express a new gender system in which men dominate in curing and nursing work-assignments at care wards with high technological level, but not in the caring assignments. And at care wards with low technological level the situation is the opposite, women dominate in all three assignments e.g. curing, nursing and caring care work.