Poaching to do the job: French Mental Health Workers and Financial Uncertainty in Psychiatric Units
Résumé
Since the early eighties, the implementation of financial management tools in French public hospitals has tended toward transforming the healthcare professionals’ mandate. Researches in this area suggest that these workers’ professionalism is directly impacted by the changes in management policies in a context of financial uncertainty.
Because they fear becoming “emptying beds workers”, psychiatric nurses try to protect what matters in their daily work. To succeed in maintaining their role, they poach (De Certeau, 1980) resources and subvert protocols. This ordinary life in the margins of organizational work generates knowledge and practices that questions the identity of mental health workers.
Based on a one year immersion in the daily work of nurses in psychiatric units as well as several interviews with mental health workers, this communication aims at contributing to a comprehensive approach of the appropriation of work in a context of uncertainty.