Against the backdrop of cultural and political ideals, this article highlights both the significance of mental health nursing in meeting population needs and the regulatory barriers that may be impeding its ability to adequately do so. Specifically, we consider how ambiguous notions of ‘proficiency’ in nurse education—prescribed by the regulator—impact the development of future mental health nurses and their mental health nursing identity. A key tension in mental health practice is the ethical‐legal challenges posed by sanctioned powers to restrict patients' (...) freedom at the same time as the desire (and obligation) to promote patients' self‐determined recovery. The genericism of the UK's Future Nurse Standards do little to prepare mental health nurses to navigate the tensions that ensue. This has consequences for nurses and patients alike, as both risk experiencing the distress and dissonance that attends giving or receiving poor care. We argue that more needs to be done to enable mental health nurses to define and articulate the nuances of the profession as part of becoming critical, thoughtful and confident practitioners. Educators can contribute to this mission by aligning curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to create meaningful opportunities for mental health nursing students to engage with the complexities of mental health nursing practice. Without this, the credibility of the profession will continue to be questioned; its future uncertain. (shrink)

The 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs tracks the fictional pursuit of an American serial killer by a Federal Bureau of Investigation trainee, via the assistance of another incarcerated serial killer. It features psychologically disturbing themes, such as corpses, the mutilation of skin and monstrous persons. Incidentally, these are all themes regularly encountered by nurses in their day‐to‐day practices, including forensic mental health nurses. Despite regular encounters with these themes and phenomena, nurses continue to find them disturbing and troubling, (...) but, at the same time, clinically fascinating. This paper will mobilize Kristeva's poststructuralist, psychoanalytic concept of abjection to relate the encounters in The Silence of the Lambs to those of nurses, to reconceptualize feelings of both disgust and fascination and to consider how vulnerability may benefit nursing practice. Of particular relevance are the breakdown of skin encountered in nursing practice, encounters with corpses and work with forensic patients considered monstrous. The film provides opportunity for nurses to conceptualize abjection in their own practice and to consider how a reconceptualization of boundaries and vulnerability may prove productive. (shrink)