'What factors underline the lack of an effective market shelter: A case study of nursing?'

This research is a sociology of the professions view of the labour market, considering market shelter creation and strengthening and the impact of this on career development and structure. A market shelter is a contract between the state and the profession (Timmons, 2010), and provides a profession with the rights to self-determination, including the ability to set educational requirements (Friedson, 1994. Timmerans, 2008). The strength of amarket shelter is influenced by career structures which are established through professional projects (Larson, 1977. Starr, 1984. Light, 2004) for example sports medicine introduced specialist qualifications for clinicians to gain greater status in the labour market (Scott, 2014).

The research question proposed is 'What factors underline the lack of an effective market shelter: A case study of nursing?'.

Nursing will be used as a case study due to its large and well-developed structure, yet despite its numerical strength, does not have great occupational power. It has a weak market shelter, characterised by a lack of career structure and pathways (Health Education England, 2015. Nuffield Health, 2016. The Health foundation, 2017). Nursing has struggled to gain a strong professional voice despite numerous professionalism projects including becoming an all graduate profession in 2013 (Rafferty, Xyrichis and Caldwell 2015). Additional research has found that this lack of career structure is one of the main reasons nurses leave the profession (The Institute for Employment Studies, 2017. NHS Improvement, 2017).