Scope of practice conflict in nursing: a new war or just the same battle?

The changing roles within health care teams reflect the rapid pace of change in contemporary health care environments. Traditional nursing roles and responsibilities are being challenged as fiscal constraints drive health reform. How nursing teams are configured in the future and the scope of practice of the individuals within those teams will require clear and unambiguous boundaries. This study explores the relationships in and between scope of practice and communication amongst teams of nurses. Six focus groups with both Registered and Enrolled Nurses were undertaken in three Sydney metropolitan hospitals in New South Wales. Nurses report that confusion surrounding scope of practice particularly in the areas of medication administration, patient allocation and workload are resulting in situations whereby nurses are feeling bullied, stressed and harassed. With the imminent widespread introduction of a third tier of nursing into acute care hospitals in Australia the findings of this study are timely and suggest that unless nursing team members clearly understand their roles and scope of practice there is potential for intra-professional workplace conflict. Furthermore the impact of the conflict may have consequences for both the individual nurse and their patients.