Robert Castel is an eminent figure in the social sciences because of his innovative contributions to various social and health fields. The seminal work of this poststructuralist author and social activist has influenced several research disciplines, but has not yet had a significant impact on nursing. In this article, we will present the thinking of this man, who considered himself a sociologist, philosopher and “historian of the present.” We will examine the most important issues he explored during his career, including (...) the psychiatric apparatus, the management of risk and the social vulnerability. We believe that this thinker's perspective on diverse social issues is very relevant to nursing practice and research and to the health sciences in general. The concepts he developed and utilized with finesse provide us with a critical reading of many contemporary health issues, particularly in mental health and psychiatric nursing. Castel's critical and engaged approach incites mobilization for social justice and greater protections for marginalized and vulnerable persons. These principles of advocacy and social justice are also at the heart of the nursing profession. (shrink)

Within the context of neoliberal healthcare, nurses and other health professionals face working conditions that leave them perpetually feeling inadequate, as though they are not enough. They are consistently expected to achieve more with less resources. In such an environment, mere professionalism proves wholly insufficient, enforcing norms of altruism and kindness. Professionals must transcend this disciplinary tool and embody a ‘more‐than‐professional’ approach. This study, informed by critical posthumanism, employs three mythical archetypes—the Medusa, the Witch and the Siren—to illuminate potential avenues (...) for resistance against prevailing trends in healthcare. Drawing on the perspectives of Hélène Cixous, Silvia Federici and Jacques Rancière, we introduce a process of resistance for healthcare professionals pushing back against the challenges of crumbling healthcare systems. Cixous' feminist reimagining of Medusa symbolizes intensified embodied sensory experiences, emphasizing the power of irony, laughter and writing in highlighting the daily struggles faced by healthcare workers. Federici's depiction of the Witch exposes clandestine alliances among healthcare workers and patients, akin to a pact with the devil, countering the individualistic, alienating approach to care provision and resisting neoliberal pressures. The Witch archetype embodies resistance grounded in creativity against the commodification of public healthcare. Finally, Rancière's ‘politics of the Siren' offers a strategy for disrupting entrenched hierarchies from the underworld. Like Sirens, healthcare workers and patients can subversively transform their silence into songs of resistance, simultaneously operating from beneath the surface of accountability measures. Our intention is to showcase the emergence of posthuman ‘professionals’ who adapt by forging new modes of social relations in response to neoliberal constraints, straying from conventional, apolitical notions of ‘professionalism’. Drawing lessons from mythical figures of resistance offers a fresh understanding of subversion as a catalyst for social and political transformation within the healthcare sector. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that nurses need to be aware of how the production of space in specific contexts – including health care systems and research institutions – perpetuates marginalized populations' state of social otherness. Lefebvre's idea regarding spatial triad is mobilized in this paper, as it pertains to two‐spirited, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer populations (2SLGBTQ*). We believe that nurses can create counter‐spaces within health care systems and research institutions that challenge normative discourses. Lefebvre's work provides us (...) the necessary tools to understand how various places or environments produce identities. In understanding Lefebvre's principles, we believe that nurses can play an essential role in creating counter‐spaces, thereby instigating counter‐institutional practices, for those who experience otherness. (shrink)

Nursing work centers around attending to a person's health during many of life's most vulnerable moments, from birth to death. Given the high‐stakes nature of this work, it is essential for nurses to critically reflect on their individual and collective impact, which can range from healing to harmful. The purpose of this paper is to use a philosophical inquiry approach and a critical lens to explore the potential influence of critical pedagogy (how we learn what we learn) on nursing praxis (...) (why we do what we do) with the aim of disrupting stigma and discrimination within the profession. This paper draws on the works of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and bell hooks to alert readers to particular windows of opportunity where an intentional adoption of critical pedagogy in nursing praxis may help the profession think differently about two important and related topics: relational violence and peer‐led knowledge mobilization. As a practice‐based and theoretically grounded profession, nurses often strive to bridge the theoretical with the practical and the individual with the systemic. Thus, developing a robust and philosophically rooted disciplinary body of knowledge is particularly important to help us defensibly grapple with the notions of truth and ethics that shape our work's very essence and impact. (shrink)

The purpose of the study was to develop an understanding of how nursing students gained perspective on nursing care of diverse populations through watching documentaries in a cultural diversity course. The basis of this paper is our analyses of students’ written responses and reactions to documentaries viewed in class. The guiding theoretical frameworks for the course content and the study included postcolonial feminism, Foucauldian thought, and cultural safety. Krathwohl's Taxonomy of the Affective Domain was used to identify themes and determine (...) how undergraduate nursing students were progressing in achieving learning outcomes. Our findings suggest that while the use of documentaries serves as a tool for deepening students’ understanding of the realities of various populations, this activity, in the absence of critical reflection, may inadvertently promote stereotypes and further marginalize different people groups. Even though nursing students reflected on the importance of cultural safety in nursing, our findings indicate that their actions may not reflect this, especially since these students are in the early stages of the nursing program. Students need to be provided with a space where they can explore implicit biases evoked by exposure to new information about different people groups as a way of enhancing culturally safe care. (shrink)

Nursing programs are complex systems that articulate values of relationality and holism, while developing curriculums that privilege metric‐driven competency‐based pedagogies. This study used an interpretive approach to analyze interviews from 20 nursing students at two Canadian Baccalaureate programs to understand how nursing's educational context, including its hidden curriculums, impacted student writing activities. We viewed this qualitative data through the lens of activity theory. Students spoke about navigating a rigid writing context. This resulted in a hyper‐focus on “figuring out” the teacher (...) with minimal focus on the act of writing. Students used a form of behavioral “code‐switching” to maximize their grade while considering how their “valuing” of the assignment fit within their writing motives. Hidden curriculum messages taught students that academic success was assured whether their writing mirrored instructor preferences. Instructional practices of rigidity reinforced unequal social conditions for some minority students. Faculty can counteract the impact of the hidden curriculum through encouragement of choice and independent thinking about writing activities. Acknowledging power relationships and their influence on how students navigate writing assignments and nursing discourse may relieve pressures on students who fear penalties for countering norms and result in a more flexible learning environment. (shrink)

This article aims to present the life and work of German thinker Hartmut Rosa as a philosopher of interest for nursing. Although his theoretical framework remains fairly unknown in the nursing domain, its main key concepts open up a philosophical and sociological approach that can contribute to the understanding of a wide range of study phenomena related to nurses, nursing, and healthcare. The concepts of social acceleration, alienation, and resonance are useful to explore healthcare organizations' performance by bringing the time (...) dimension of modernity to the center; to grasp nurses' experiences of caring for patients; and to understand nurses as agents endowed with the capacity to deploy their political agency to create alternative forms of relationship to themselves, to others, and the world, challenging the institutional order of healthcare organizations when it fails to resonate with their professional ethos. In this article, we propose Hartmut Rosa's theoretical framework as a new and inspiring phenomenological and critical lens that should be further explored to advance knowledge concerning phenomena that are found at the crossroads of the nursing domain and other fields of knowledge. (shrink)

The terms neoliberalism and neoliberal play a variety of roles ranging from major to trivial in the papers they appear in. Both phrases carry pejorative connotations in nurse writing. Yet irrespective of the role assumed in argument, readers are rarely provided with enough information to determine what the descriptors mean in a substantive or concrete sense. It is proposed that scholars who use these terms in their work should consider expressing themselves more carefully than often occurs at present. Virtue signalling (...) in academic writing should, absent critical argument, be discouraged. (shrink)

Stimulated by our conversations at the 2018 International Philosophy of Nursing Society Conference and our shared interests, the coauthors present an argument for augmenting the broader discussion of “missed care” with our synthesized concept called structural missingness. We take the problem of missed care to be largely grounded on a particular economic construction of the healthcare system within an era of what some are calling the Capitalocene, capturing the pervasive influence of capitalism on nature, humanity and the world order. Our (...) perspective is that of the United States, however, extrapolations can be made to the social and healthcare systems in other countries. We are concerned with the underlying conditions that structurally reify inequality and ultimately undermine nursing practice. To situate the discussion, we briefly review existing literature on the contextualization of missed care. We understand contemporary circumstances of missed care as a function of the neoliberalization of healthcare, including the idea of nursing as a commodity. From this, we discuss the implications of missed care, which forms the basis of our critique. Synthesizing the term “structural missingness, we locate a moral imperative in the professional and disciplinary commitments of nursing to consider who and what have been left out. This moral imperative for the nursing profession, along with other social and health related professions, underscores our obligation to be involved in uncovering inequities and conceptualizing upstream solutions for structural missingness. (shrink)

Nursing professionalization is both ongoing and global, being significant not only for the nursing workforce but also for patients and healthcare systems. For this reason, it is important to have an in‐depth understanding of this process and the factors that could affect it. This literature review utilizes a welfare state approach to examine macrolevel structural determinants of nursing professionalization, addressing a previously identified gap in this literature, and synthesizes research on the relevance of studying nursing professionalization. The use of a (...) welfare state framework facilitates the understanding that the wider social, economic, and political system exercises significant power over the distribution of resources in a society, providing a glimpse into the complex politics of health and health care. The findings shed light on structural factors outside of nursing, such as country‐level education, health, labor market, and gender policies that could impact the process of professionalization and thus could be utilized to strengthen nursing through facilitating increased professionalization levels. Addressing gender inequalities and other structural determinants of nursing professionalization could contribute to achieving health equity and could benefit health systems through enhanced availability, skill‐level, and sustainability of nursing human resources, improved and efficient access to care, improved patient outcomes, and cost savings. (shrink)