Hindered Care: Institutional Obstructions to Carework and Professionalism in Czech Nursing

Over its history, while nursing responsibilities have shifted from primarily hygienic tasks (vocational work) to more medically centered duties (professional work), the work of care remains at the core of the nursing profession. Nurses judge themselves and each other as professionals based on how well they are able to care for the patients in their charge. A professional nurse's ability to care centers on the institutional environment in which she works. Using an ethnographic case study of Czech nurses as migrants, this article explores how the discourse of care work enables nurses to examine their professional identities in different institutional contexts, that of their native Czech Republic and in foreign workplaces. At its foundation, I explore what happens when the institutional setting in which caring is supposed to take place hinders the production of caring practices.