50227 - The Future of Work in Healthcare Professions: From Working Conditions to Theory

Description

For nearly a century, health professions have been an exemplary case for the study of professional work. In the wake of COVID-19, the Great Resignation, and the increase in remote work, sociological understandings of the present and future of work are more important than ever. This invited panel will consider recent transformations in health professions work, bringing critical attention to how the day-to-day work conditions for health professionals present opportunities to advance sociological theories of professional work. Indeed, the classic cornerstones of sociological theorizing about professional work—autonomy, service to the public, and expertise—have been undermined by corporatization and other such structural changes. Simultaneously, health professions work has become more diversified, with particular growth and differentiation among nursing and care work fields, and new actors like patient advocates have taken more prominent roles in healthcare delivery and research. In response to these changes, our panel will explore how sociologists have traditionally understood “the professions” through extant literature and whether this remains a useful body of theory for describing contemporary work conditions. This panel will bring together experts on a variety of classic health professions—physicians and nurses—as well as newer and paraprofessional forms of work—like patient advocates and home healthcare workers. The panelists will critically consider longstanding questions about autonomy and internal regulation versus external pressures like patient consumerism, describing what these dilemmas look like in a contemporary context and updating the field with new insights about health professional work conditions and the opportunities for new theorizing that these work conditions present. Panelists will draw on empirical analyses of the changing nature of professional work in healthcare to develop methodological and theoretical toolkits for studying the future of professional work as it unfolds.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Presider

• Hyeyoung Oh Nelson, University of Colorado-Denver

Panelists

• Fumilayo Showers, University of Connecticut

• Tania M. Jenkins, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• LaTonya Trotter, University of Washington

• Alexandra Vinson, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Kelly Underman, Drexel University

Session Organizers

• Alexandra Vinson, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Kelly Underman, Drexel University