Support interprofessional collaboration. The boundary work of nurse managers[Soutenir la collaboration interprofessionnelle. Le travail frontière des cadres de santé]

While interprofessional collaboration is essential to the quality of care, nurse managers tasked with promoting it are increasingly occupied by their role in managing resources, particularly human resources. Indeed, the context of absenteeism and shortage of paramedical professionals has worsened in recent years, leading nurse managers to dedicate the majority of their time to addressing the lack of paramedical staff by utilizing management tools. This research aims to understand whether support for interprofessional collaboration by nurse managers can be compatible with their role in workforce management. Through a case study conducted in a French university hospital, we demonstrate that managing the workforce by nurse managers entails making decisions that involve negotiated compromises with various stakeholders (doctors, paramedical staff, administrative staff, etc.): both workforce management and support for interprofessional collaboration are thus ensured by nurse managers through boundary work. We show that this boundary work operates at two levels (on the boundaries of other professional groups within the hospital on one hand, and on the professional boundaries of healthcare managers themselves on the other) and produces two effects. If the work aimed at blurring professional boundaries between the different hospital groups leads to strengthened collaboration in decision-making, the conservative or extensive boundary work conducted on the professional boundaries of paramedical managers allows them, conversely, to forgo the need to collaborate and to make decisions autonomously. It is the implementation of these decisions that then leads doctors, paramedical staff, and administrative staff to collaborate for their execution