The time working in health sector. A comparative approach Belgium, Italy, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Sweden

This research on the new forms of employment and the management of working time in the health sector has covered six countries in the European Union. Theoretically, the approach adopted has been based on societal analysis and aims to identify the main social relationships interacting with the phenomenon under study. Four categories of social relations have been pre-identified and then confirmed by experience: the socio-economic sphere, the organisational sphere, the regulatory sphere and the domestic sphere. Empirically, this work is based on the case study method, with the conduct of a detailed study of one hospital in each country, and more specifically the departments of orthopaedics and obstetrics in that hospital. The observations have led to conflicting findings. While the practices of management of employment and working time remain very different from one country to another, as testified for example by the differential rates of part-time work, there are also common developments in all six countries, in particular the development of part-time work and the intensification of the workload placed on nursing staff due to the threefold effect of the limits on staffing for financial reasons, growing social demand for improvements in the quality of care, and staff shortages.