Nursing a grievance: Hospital Nurses' Responses to Health Service Rationalisation in Ireland and Southern Italy

This book seeks to answer three interrelated questions regarding changes in the funding, organisation and management of the health service in the Republic of Ireland and Southern Italy over the last two decades. The first of these regards the extent to which health service rationalisation has followed a similar pattern in Ireland and Italy, the second asks about the impact of this process on nurses’ working conditions and the third inquires about union responses to the rationalisation process. The author begins by explaining why it is helpful to compare Ireland and Italy, justifying this comparison by drawing on the debate about welfare ‘regimes’. He then describes the overall approach adopted in the book, which applies the tools of industrial sociology – with a particular focus on Labour Process Theory – to an occupational group that has received comparatively little attention within this area of sociology. This leads to a discussion of research design and methodological issues, where the reasons for adopting a multi-level (local and national) and multi-method (quantitative and qualitative) approach is explained. Building on the analysis of health policy, management strategies, nurses’ work grievances and union representation presented in the five main chapters of the book, it concluded by making some general comments regarding the challenges currently facing nurses and their unions.