An economic basis for the proletarianization of physicians

In their article, McKinlay and Arches have provided us with a very interesting and perceptive analysis of how it has become possible to proletarianize physicians. The question raised herein is why it may be happening now. An ex ante (as opposed to alternative) hypothesis is that the real target of capital is the medical sector itself. That is, the relative loss of autonomy of physicians may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to resolve the real problem. The solution to the real problem depends not merely on reducing physicians' incomes and status in order to promote the profits of the medical sector, but to reduce the relatively inefficient and unnecessary medical sector's share of gross national product (GNP) as part of the solution to the larger economic crisis.     

The development of Canadian nursing: professionalization and proletarianization

In this article, the development of nursing in Canada is described in terms of three major time periods: the emergence of lay nursing, including organization and registration, 1870-1930; the move to the hospital, 1930-1950; and unionization and the routinization of health care, 1950 to the present. This development is viewed in the light of the orienting concepts of professionalization, proletarianization, and medical dominance (and gender analysis). This historical trajectory of nursing shows an increasing occupational autonomy but continuing struggles over control of the labor process. Nursing is now using theory, organizational changes in health care, and credentialism to help make nursing "separate from but equal to" medicine and to gain control over the day-to-day work of the nurse. Nursing can thus be viewed as undergoing processes of both professionalization and proletarianization. As nursing seeks to control the labor process, its occupational conflicts are joined to the class struggle of white-collar workers in general. Analysis of nursing indicates the problems involved in sorting out the meaning of concepts that are relevant to occupational or class analysis but which focus on the same empirical phenomenon.     

Hereditary physicians of the Scottish islands

With the demise of the delivery of health-care by the Columban missionaries in the Scottish islands, there evolved a system of medical care by clan officers. These highly educated clan-physicians held office through hereditary tenure. Evidence is strongest for the existence of the Beaton physicians, but other families, including the O'Conachers, MacLachlans and MacLeas, held similar appointments. These hereditary physicians declined in importance with the demise of the clan system, when other physicians, holding patronage from the landlords, came to the islands.     

Founding physicians

Physicians have always been key contributors to the founding and success of Catholic health care facilities in the United States. Their contributions have ranged from working with clergy to attract a congregation of women religious to open a facility to raising funds for hospital buildings or donating medical equipment. For a century and a half, doctors have partnered with women and men religious to improve the health and quality of communities. Pioneers in their own right, these physicians should be considered "physician founders" of the Catholic health ministry.