Perpetuating ‘New Public Management’ at the expense of nurses' patient education: a discourse analysis

This study aimed to explore the conditions for nurses' daily patient education work by focusing on managers' way of speaking about the patient education provided by nurses in hospital care. An explorative, qualitative design with a social constructionist perspective was used. Data were collected from three focus group interviews and analysed by means of critical discourse analysis. Discursive practice can be explained by the ideology of hegemony. Due to a heavy workload and lack of time, managers could 'see' neither their role as a supporter of the patient education provided by nurses, nor their role in the development of nurses' pedagogical competence. They used organisational, financial, medical and legal reasons for explaining their failure to support nurses' provision of patient education. The organisational discourse was an umbrella term for 'things' such as cost-effectiveness, which were prioritised over patient education. There is a need to remove managerial barriers to the professional development of nurses' patient education. Managers should be responsible for ensuring and overseeing that nurses have the prerequisites necessary for providing patient education as well as for enabling continuous reflective dialogue and opportunities for learning in practice.