Negotiating jurisdiction in the workplace: A multiple-case study of nurse prescribing in hospital settings

This paper reports on a multiple-case study of prescribing by nurse specialists in Dutch hospital settings. Most analyses of interprofessional negotiations over professional boundaries take a macro sociological approach and ignore workplace jurisdictions. Yet boundary blurring takes place and healthcare professionals renegotiate formal policies in the workplace. This paper studies the division of jurisdictional control over prescribing between nurse specialists and medical specialists in the workplace, and examines the relationship between workplace jurisdiction and legal jurisdiction over prescribing. Data collection took place in the Netherlands during the first half of 2013. The study used in-depth interviews with fifteen nurse specialists and fourteen medical specialists, non-participant observation of nurse specialists' prescribing consultations and document analysis. Great variety was found in the extent to which and way in which nurse specialists' legal prescriptive authority had been implemented. These findings suggest that there is considerable discrepancy between the division of jurisdictional control over prescribing at the macro (legal) level and the division at the micro (workplace) level.