Nursing in the European Union: The World of Work

Nursing in the European Union demonstrates how the European Union (EU) has refashioned the nursing world throughout the Member States via its power in many other policy domains. Volume 1 focused on the EU’s impact on nursing education, regulation, and research endeavours. This volume focuses on real-life situations and problems EU nurses face-wages, stress, work environments, and dispute resolution-and places them in a comparative perspective.

In this unique work, Sondra Z. Koff develops a profile of nurses’ workplaces, highlighting similarities and diversities, challenges, and nurses’ opinions. Though it has limited formal authority in the health and health care sectors, the EU has had a significant impact on the working life of these practitioners in areas such as employment options, industrial relations and their outcomes, organizational and environmental features of nurses’ workplaces, collective action, and more.

New policies and legalities are regulating the production, distribution, practices, and organization of nursing according to supranational standards. Koff helps to fill a gap in the literature, given the dearth of comparative, cross-national, book-length studies of the nursing profession. By adopting a framework focused on an institution, policies, and politics, Koff addresses these topics from the perspective of multiple actors, both national and international.