Socialsygeplejerskens praksisfelt i somatisk hospitalregi

The social nurse's field of practice in the somatic hospital setting

Lervig, Rannvá Nattestad

4. semester

Socialt Arbejde, Kandidat

2026

2026-01-05

80

This thesis examines how social nurses construct, perform, and negotiate social work practices in somatic hospital settings in Denmark, focusing om professional role formation, organizational positioning, cross-sectoral coordination, and stigma management in interactions with socially marginalized patients. The role of the social nurse represents an emerging professional function situated at the intersection of clinical healthcare and social work, operating within organizational environments primarily structured around medical logics and formal professional hierarchies. The study adopts a qualitative, exploratory case study design based on five semi-structured interviews conducted at three hospitals across the Capital Region of Denmark and Region Sjællend. The analytical approach is abductive, integrating theoretical frameworks on professional jurisdictions and boundary work (Andrew Abbott), social practice and capital activation in institutional fields (Pierre Bourdieu), and interactional stigma negotiation, identity work, and face-work strategies (Erving Goffman). These perspectives enable a multi-layered analysis of how social nurses both adapt to and subtly challenge dominant institutional norms in everyday hospital practice. The findings show that the social nurse’s professional scope and capacity for action are deeply contingent on organizational culture, leadership endorsement, interprofessional trust, at the ability to mobilize capital-particularly social and cultural capital – to gain influence within the hospital field. While the role is formally low-visibility, in functions in practice as a vital form of cross-departmental and cross-sectoral brokerage, ensuring continuity of care, translating social complexity into clinical workflows, and mitigating institutional stigma that man compromise patient participation, dignity and equitable treatment. The study further demonstrates that stigma managment is not patient-directed but also embedded in professional interactions, where social nurses engage in strategic identity work to legitimize their mandate without disrupting clinical authority structures. The thesis contributes new analytical and practice-based knowledge to an under-researched professional domain in Denmark, highlighting the structural conditions that shape and limit hospital-based social work. It underscores the importance of strengthening institutional legitimacy for social interventions in somatic healthcare and argues that social nurses play a crucial – yet precarious – role in advancing holistic, dignified, and socially equitable patient care pathway for marginalized populations. The thesis ultimately concludes that integrating social work within somatic hospital regimes requires not only individual professional competencies but organizational recognition, interprofessional jurisdictional space, and sustained structural support to avoid the continued marginalization of the social domain in Danish healthcare systems.

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