A post-deferential society?

Abstract

[Extract] In the course of one of several public e-mail discussions sparked by a deliberately provocative attack on nursing made by Ms. Minette Marrin (2011) in the Sunday Times,1 it was suggested that we live in a 'post-deferential society'. Although an intriguing claim, this certainly is not the case from where I stand! Indeed, the university, as the principal site of nurse education, is universally an exemplar of a deferential, hierarchical system, in which academics teach critical thinking but kowtow without a hint of resistance to the most unwanted and unreasonable demands of those in authority. In Australia, this attitude is endemic and infects public organizations and the business world alike. Quite apart from popular investigative reports, evidence of this is easy to find, especially in the health sector – rapid staff turnover, low levels of job satisfaction, high sickness rates, constant claims of bullying, loss of quality staff overseas, lack of innovation, persistence of dysfunctional components of the system, and so on. Having developed in a strictly hierarchical system, with which its leaders naturally colluded, nursing is doubly disadvantaged, suffering from deference institutionalized in its professional culture and deference imposed on nurse educators and students by the university system.