Conclusion
Glouberman and Mintzberg (2001) in their study of health care organizations in the UK and Canada argued that that the greater the differentiation in an organization, then the greater the need for integration among units of the organization. WH is a colossus in terms of size with over 20,000 employees and a tremendous range of complex activities. However, in the main, activities are relatively poorly integrated and the relationship between nurse leaders and surgeons is just one example of that reality.
The total accountability of nurse leaders for the costs of direct patient care at WH was at variance with the practice patterns of the surgeon group. The surgeon group was primarily motivated by individual patient advocacy and by advancing technology in individual specialities. Conversely, nurse leaders were focussed on delivering acceptable care at the patient population level. Persuasion was frequently cited as a mechanism for influencing the surgeon group to amend their traditional working practices. Such persuasive efforts were most successful when it was possible to create some commonality of interests via a problematization (Callon, 1986) agenda such that surgeons could be persuaded of the necessity and clinical benefits arising from a particular cause of action. On a day to day basis, nurse leaders were reasonably successful with the surgeon group as horse trading often helped persuade the surgeons to change course. They were helped in their endeavours by the respect of the surgeons for nurses’ expertise and control over resources such as OR time. In this sense they were regarded as ‘quasi equals’ (Abbott, 1988).
It is hard to imagine the independent status of doctors in Canada (and British Columbia) being readily changed as the introduction of Medicare itself took many years and involved successive battles with the medical profession. The current fee FFS system for remunerating surgeons is a deep-set institutionalized practice whose roots go back to the foundations of Medicare in Canada. While the BC Ministry of Health periodically re-negotiates FFS rates with the BCMA, it would likely be extremely difficult to move away from this type of system without a concerted effort by provincial governments to move to another system, such as fixed salaries, on a national basis. Consequently our view is that amending contracts as desired by WH executives and building in provisions linked to financial accountability for doctors will not be easy to implement and producing results will be even harder. Financial incentives (interessement devices) are a very powerful motivator of medical professionals as indicated in some of the literature (Robbins, 2007) and as shown by our research and any new structures designed to improvement accountability frameworks will need to take account of that.
For this research we believe that ANT has provided a powerful explanatory mechanism for the interactions between nurse leaders and surgeons which are dynamic, rich with negotiation/persuasion and constantly shifting like sands in the desert. The environment in which these actors operate is public sector acute care and characterised by resource constraints on all fronts. Much activity is governed by rules, routines and established professional practices. Accordingly we believe an explanatory framework that combines both ANT and Institutional Theory likely provides the most vivid picture of decision making in a hospital environment.