RN? Registered or rubber nurse?

This paper, as part of a larger critical ethnographic doctoral study, describes the influence of workplace regulation, nursing culture and a lack of role boundaries on nursing workload. Nursing workload is of keen interest in a climate where shortages of staff and limited funding constrain the number of registered nurses available to provide direct clinical care. Contemporary nursing work is subject to ‘measurement’ using a raft of workload measurement tools which qualify and quantify a range of tasks which nurses perform. However, such tools do not recognise the ‘other’ work which nurses do related to workplace culture and climate.