Unsuitable for the profession
Ida Baklund - Ph.D. Fellow
Advisor:
Professor Kåre Heggen
Second advisor
Professor Harald Grimen
Project period:
Autumn 2004-2008
In the light of the Norwegian authorities’ claim of authorization for health professionals, this project explores and describes who is consider unsuitable for professional work in a specific health profession. The main conditions for authorization are a) a completed and approved education, b) a completed and approved required practice, c) age under 75 years old and d) not to be unsuitable for the profession. The questions are who is considered unsuitable and why, who can do assessments about this, and if a candidate is found unsuitable, in what degree are assessments consistent? The purpose of the project is to obtain useful knowledge for making good tools to assess the condition not unsuitable for profession in the Norwegian legislation for health professionals. The project has a theoretical and an empirical part. The concept unsuitable is theoretically clarified. Authorization as a legal phenomenon is similarly clarified viewed against a background of accessible public data. Empirical data is collected in two ways; 1)) from clinical studies in nursing, bachelor degree, through narratives about an unsuitable student, told by nurses and assistant professors by using Critical Incident Technique and 2) from documents on supervisory authorities’ administrative decisions about first time authorizations and recall of authorisations.Despite a mainly inductive approach to analysis, a profession-theoretical understanding about the interactions between state authorities, the nursing profession and the nurse professionals in an educational perspective will be used. Likely, the assumption that assessment is a sort of decision will have some theoretical implications.