containment era. In the expansionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s, nursing labor in hospitals was organized around a stratified work force performing differentiated tasks. Beginning in the 1970s, this system of labor was transformed by a trend toward RN-predominant staffing, the displacement of less-credentialed workers, and the reunification of nursing tasks. Nursing leaders promoted task reunification as a form of professional practice reminiscent of nursing before the widespread employment of a stratified work force in postwar hospitals.

Hide more