The Medical Model to the Management Model: Power Issues for Nursing

Abstract
The transfer of control of institutional health delivery from the medical profession to the managerial model and its implications for the nursing profession is the subject of my enquiry.  As the basis for an interpretation of Foucault’s work, I have used a previously unpublished text on power by Foucault, published in 1982 by Dreyfus & Rainbow as an ‘afterword’ for their book.  I have used Michel Foucault’s five factors for analysis of power, to summarise the elements which are exercised in these two forms of control.  Although emphasis has been given to the effects of control on nursing practice, it is in nursing education that I have found possibilities for the nursing profession to address the challenges it now faces.