3 Review(s)

Remodelling Hospitals and Heatlh Professions in Europe brings together a comparative study of health care organization, medicine and nursing in a timely and challenging way. First, it provides an overview of health care systems across Europe and an explanation for their differences. Second, it questions the relationships between medicine, nursing and the state and how this systematically varies across Europe in a way that to a large extent correlates to underlying political, social and cultural differences. These differences include civic culture, clientelism and gender, and the author systematically explores the relationship between state organization and professionalism contrasting medicine and nursing across Europe. The analysis is based on a synthesis of the sociology of the professions, organizational analysis and health policy and explains why neo-liberalism and new public management has had an impact across Europe, but in ways that emphasize divergence over convergence.