This book offers fresh insights from recent research into the nursing profession. Nurses represent an important part of the professionally trained female workforce and, being a middle-class profession, changes in nursing reflect changes of many working women worldwide. Scholarship addressing these changes, however, often consists of narratives of nurses talking about themselves, which can be enriched by a sociological background that foregrounds hypotheses.In this book, the author problematizes the realities which inform, affect and shape nursing, offering new perspectives on the consequences of those social realities for the nursing profession and society more broadly. He draws on extensive field research with nurses in the workplace, spending time with them, interviewing key actors and reading and analyzing documents critically through a distinctive sociological lens. The book uniquely draws on social theory, rather than the more usual forms of critical reflection on the evolving state of professional nursing globally, to examine various aspects of the gendered and socially organized nursing workforce within a sociological framework; fills a gap by examining nursing from sociological theories, models and concepts, written in accessible language and illustrated with clinical examples; and draws on extensive field research observing nurses in the workplace. It provides an essential resource for professionals working in health services, labor unions, and professional organizations, and faculty nurses and advanced students alike.