Escalation of the Nurse-Physician Conflict: Registered Care Technologists and the Economic Crisis

Abstract

Rivalry between nurses and physicians has been escalating in recent years. The American Medical Association's (AMA's) recent proposal to deal with the nursing shortage by introducing a non-nurse bedside care technician to be called a registered care technologist has met with strong opposition from the American Nurses' Association (ANA). This article suggests that limiting the analysis of this debate to changes taking place within the health sector is problematic. The determining constraints are not endogenous to the health sector, but are located in the broader macroeconomic context. The object, herein, is to locate the AMA's proposal and the ANA's response in the light of the macroeconomic crisis that is forcing the U.S. economy, including the health sector, to restructure. This restructuring generates increasing rivalry and conflict as firms and workers vie to consolidate, and where possible, to expand their relative power in the face of generally declining and qualitatively changing circumstances.