Interprofessional Competition in an Organizational Field Framework: 21st Century U.S. Birth Attendant Trends

• In Event: 322 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

Childbirth is a specific health care practice that offers valuable insight into the larger institutional processes at work in the United States health care system. This research expands the existing literature on midwifery practices in the United States by incorporating the organizational field framework from Institutional Theory to link findings from existing micro-level studies on interaction and professionalism with macro-level studies on policy, health care structure, and legitimacy of institutionalized medicine. This paper uses the concept of an organizational field to analyze the changing trends in birth attendants between the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. The argument proposes the shifting trends reflect larger institutional level issues of interprofessional competition using different processes of legitimacy to claim jurisdiction.

Author

• Thomas Christopher Robinson, University of South Carolina