Professional Talk: How Middle Managers Frame Care Workers as Professionals

• Published in: Health care analysis Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 47 - 70
• Main Authors: Oldenhof, Lieke, Stoopendaal, Annemiek, Putters, Kim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-03-2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Attitude of Health Personnel; Coexistence; Discourse; Ethics; Health administration; Health care industry; Health Informatics; Health Personnel; Humans; Interprofessional Relations; Long term care; Long term health care; Managers; Medical personnel; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Middle managers; Original Article; Personal values; Philosophy of Medicine; Professional competence; Professional standards; Professionalism; Public Health; Work; New York; Professional talk; Middle managers; Professionalism; Vocational care workers; Long term care
• ISSN: 1065-3058; 1573-3394
• DOI: 10.1007/s10728-013-0269-9

This paper examines how middle managers in the long term care sector use the discourse of professionalism to create ‘appropriate’ work conduct of care workers. Using Watson’s concept of professional talk, we study how managers in their daily work talk about professionalism of vocationally skilled care workers. Based on observations and recordings of mundane conversations by middle managers, we found four different professional talks that co-exist: (1) appropriate looks and conduct, (2) reflectivity about personal values and ‘good’ care, (3) methodical work methods, (4) competencies. Jointly, these professional talks constitute an important discursive resource for middle managers to facilitate change on the work floor. Change involves the reconfiguration of care work and different managerial-worker relations. Middle managers use professional talks in both enabling and disenabling ways vis-à-vis care workers. Based on these findings, we suggest a more nuanced portrayal of the relationship between managers and professionals. Rather than being based on an intrinsic opposition, i.e. ‘managers versus professionals’, this relationship is flexibly reconstructed via professional talk.