The concept of professionalism is embedded into all aspects of nursing education and practice yet is rarely critically interrogated in nursing scholarship. This paper describes how professionalism in nursing is based on whiteness. When actualized, this oppressive construct homogenizes individuals' identities to assist nurses in building and wielding power against each other and against patients, and results in dehumanization and disconnection. Foregrounding an ethic of authenticity as a practice of resistance against white professionalism offers an alternative possibility for how nursing (...) could be taught, practiced and theorized. As such a practice must begin with oneself, the authors outline a reflexive process from which to begin this work. (shrink)

Existing challenges to the legitimacy of mental health nursing in the United Kingdom and beyond have stimulated a critical self‐reflection and discourse around the mental health nursing role, forcing the profession to question its identity and critically re‐evaluate its position within the wider healthcare arena. In this discussion paper, I suggest that the current difficulties in conceptualising mental health nurse identity arise from our role being inherently interwoven with distinctive challenges and unique needs of our service users. Emerging from this (...) idea is that the ‘being’ (and the ‘doing’) of mental health nursing is firmly situated within the sphere of intersubjective relations. Drawing upon Hegel's ideas of reciprocal recognitive relations, to support the notion that our profession's role and purpose are better understood when defined in relation to the work that we do with our service users, I argue that it is in the understanding (and even embracing) of intersubjectivity as a core principle of mental health nursing, where we might not just better understand ourselves but also know how to shift asymmetric relations with our service users towards those which are more commensurate and mutually beneficial. (shrink)