The Changing Role of Nurses

Abstract

ROFESSIONAL training in a field such as nursing, to a considerable extent, consists in learning the behaviors that are appropriate to one or more fairly well defined roles, the ways in which those roles interlock with others in complex systems, and the skills that are necessary for at least minimum effectiveness in performance. A role, as defined by social psychologists, is not necessarily what anybody does. It is rather that complex of behavior that is expected of one who occupies a given position or office. Since roles are' defined in terms of collective expectations, any considerable difference in the set of expectations one group or another has with respect to a given role may make difficult the performance of the role. If, as sometimes happens, doctors have one set of notions about what nurses should do and nurses have different ideas of what their role is, any performance is likely to produce strain, to the extent that it is not consistent with the nurses' own conception of their role or with their idea of what the physicians' expectations are.