Nursing, physician control and the medical monopoly follow the efforts of physicians to achieve a monopoly in healthcare, often by subjugating nurses - their only real competitors. Attempts by nurses to reform many aspects of healthcare have repeatedly been countered by doctors whose main aim is to achieve total control of the healthcare 'system', often to the detriment of patient health and safety. Thetis M. Group and Joan I. Roberts first review the activities of the first female healers and nurses and examine the nurse-doctor relationship since the early 20th century. The sexist domination of nursing by medicine was not accidental, but was an organised and institutionalised phenomenon. Nurses' efforts to gain greater autonomy were often blocked by hospital administration and organised medicine. The consolidation of the medical monopoly in the 1920s and 1930s, together with the decline of feminism, led to the concretisation of stereotypical gender roles in nursing and medicine. The growing unease in the nurse-doctor relationship intensified from the 1940s to the 1960s
century; the growth and complexity of the healthcare industry, the expansion of scientific knowledge and the increasing specialisation of physicians all place high demands on nurses. Gender stereotypes remained at the centre of the nurse-doctor relationship in the 1980s and 1990s.