Nursing, Physician Control, and the Medical Monopoly traces the efforts by physicians over time to achieve a monopoly in healthcare, often by subordinating nurses-their only genuine competitors. Attempts by nurses to reform many aspects of healthcare have been repeatedly opposed by physicians whose primary interest has been to achieve total control of the healthcare "system," often to the detriment of patients' health and safety.

Thetis M. Group and Joan I. Roberts first review the activities of early women healers and nurses and examine nurse-physician relations from the early 1900s...