Organizational and professional impacts on dealing with ignorance. An empirical investigation of clinicians, nurses and resident physicians

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Maximiliane Wilkesmann
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2010 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 183445817

The renewal proposal bases upon the already gained research results about the influencing factors on physician's dealing with ignorance in hospitals (WI 3706/1-1). The aim of this proposal is to sociologically investigate and to reconstruct different constellations of actors in terms of organization and profession. On the one hand, we will investigate the nurses' strategies on dealing with ignorance in hospitals. Nurses still belong to the occupational group of semi-professions but they work in the same organization like physicians, i.e. hospitals. On the other hand we will analyze the strategies on dealing with ignorance of resident physicians. The aim is to find out whether the adopted strategies are dominated by the affiliation to a profession or by the organizational membership.The main research questions are:(1) Which influence has the organization on the adopted strategies? Which alternative strategies do resident physicians apply to overcome their ignorance because of the missing organizational framework?(2) Which influence has the affiliation to a profession on dealing with ignorance? Are there differences between physicians and nurses? Are professional borders less important because of a common organizational goal?(3) Which influence has the membership to a subspecialty (anesthesiology vs. surgery)? Do there exist same patterns in respect of resident physicians and physicians who work at hospitals or is the organizational context a dominant factor on the adopted strategies?Apart from the expected theoretical implications we will be able to develop recommendations for the daily practice on how physicians and nurses can deal with ignorance in a positive way.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants