The Symbolic Stakes of an Academic Degree. Reconfigurations of Power Relationships and New Tensions Within the Nursing Profession

The opening in 2009 at the University of Lausanne of a master’s degree program marked a new stage in the history of the profession in Switzerland. With new resources, the emergence of these nurses disrupting professional relationships, both with respect to doctors as well as within the profession. After having presented the issues of making knowledge more academic and more scientific in every sense, we show some effects of this diploma, in particular the attempt of redefinition of the practical and symbolic roles to which it gives rise.