Hospitals and the nursing profession

Hospital systems throughout the developed world are undergoing waves of reform which seek to address multiple challenges of intensifying acuity, such as population ageing, technological advance, heightened expectations on the part of increasingly informed patients, the reduction of public spending deficits and the specialization of staff, especially nurses, as well as the difficulty in establishing appropriate incentives for change and improved performance. Within such a context, the purpose of this book is to analyze the interaction between the nursing professions and hospital institutions in France and Japan, taking as its starting point the conviction that comparative analysis of empirical reality in each of these countries will provide new insights into the transformations currently taking place.

To that end, the material in this study has been contributed by an international, interdisciplinary team of experts, combining economic, sociological, political and historical per