Making room in the clinic : nurse practitioners and the evolution of modern health care

For years, nurses expanded their practice boundaries to meet their patients' needs, both with and without physician consent.

But during the 1960s and 1970s, their level of recognition and authority changed dramatically.

Today, nurse practitioners hold graduate degrees in a clinical specialty and are responsible for an enormous range of services from delegated medical regimens to independent care provision in hospitals and clinics.

They provide primary health care to a range of clients along a scale from healthy to chronically ill and from wealthy to poor and uninsured.In "Making Room in the Clinic", Julie Fairman examines the context in which the nurse practitioner movement emerged, how large political and social movements influenced it, and how it contributed to the changing definition of medical care.

Drawing on a wealth of primary source material, including interviews with key figures in the movement, Fairman describes how this evolution helped create an influential foundation for health policies that emerged at the end of the twentieth century, including health maintenance organizations, a renewed interest in health awareness and disease prevention, and consumer-based services.