Medical hegemony in decision-making--a barrier to interdisciplinary working in intensive care?

Background: Health care policy in the United Kingdom identifies the need for health professionals to find new ways of working to deliver patient-focussed and economic care. Much debate has followed on the nature of working relationships within the health care team.

Aim: This paper reports on an ethnographic study that examined the nursing role in clinical decision-making in intensive care units. This was chosen as a case for analysis due to the close doctor-nurse relationships that are essential in this acute and complex care setting.

Methods: Data were collected during two-stages of fieldwork using participant observation, in-depth ethnographic interviews and documentation across three clinical sites.

Findings: The findings revealed the different types of knowledge used for, divergence of roles involved in and degree of authority in clinical decision-making. Furthermore, conflict arose between doctors and nurses due to these differences and in particular because medicine dominated the decision-making process.

Conclusions: The nursing role, whilst pivotal to implementing clinical decisions, remained unacknowledged and devalued. Medical hegemony continues to render nurses unable to influence substantially the decision-making process. This has fundamental ramifications for the quality of team decision-making and the effectiveness of new ways of inter-professional working in intensive care.