This paper addresses the notion of wound care as a technology of skin and other skins imbued with the combined power of technology and science. It presents the discourses of wound care evident in the accounts of patients and nurses concerning this care, and discussions about wounds in wound care interest groups, journals, and advertising material about wound care products. The discussion focuses on wounds and wound dressings as effects immanent in the power relations of discourses of wound care. These (...) effects colour and influence nurses’ responses to wounds and wound care products. Moreover, the discourses that portray these practices are evidence of the complex articulation between technoscience and gender. Nurses and patients are fascinated by wound technoscience and lured towards it by its potential for mastery and control over wounds. Such seductions are evident in the texts of nurses, patients, and pharmaceutical advertisements for wound care products. Finally, the ways that these representations are used to talk about and market wound care products are shown as exemplifying the finer points of wound management as a nursing technoscience. (shrink)

The social production of an enterprise clinic: nurses, clinical pathway guidelines and contemporary healthcare practicesIn this paper I critically engage with the forming of contemporary nursing practice with/in an ‘enterprise clinic’ in order to discuss the practical potential of developing a mode of reflective practice that is a critical ontology of self. Critical engagement in the paper is secured through a ‘troubling’ of the relationship between the contemporary practices of both the self and governance, without the reduction of one to (...) the other. The paper draws on my doctoral study in which I combined the techniques of ethnography and discourse analysis in order to critically examine registered nurses’ employment of clinical pathway guidelines through an analysis of the political technologies through which that engagement was constituted. This critical purchase was applied because of the influence of the contemporary ‘problematisation’ of healthcare provision in western society on the formation and deployment of the professional identities of nurses. (shrink)

This article examines field studies of nursing work published in the English language between 1993 and 2003 as the first step towards an empirically based reformulation of the nursing mandate. A decade of ethnographic research reveals that, contrary to contemporary theories which promote an image of nursing work centred on individualised unmediated caring relationships, in real‐life practice the core nursing contribution is that of the healthcare mediator. Eight bundles of activity that comprise this intermediary role are described utilising evidence from (...) the literature. The mismatch between nursing's culture and ideals and the structure and constraints of the work setting is a chronic source of practitioner dissatisfaction. It is argued that the profession has little to gain by pursuing an agenda of holistic patient care centred on emotional intimacy and that an alternative occupational mandate focused on the healthcare mediator function might make for more humane health services and a more viable professional future. (shrink)

This article presents a reflexive account by way of a critical interpretive review of the literature pertaining to falls of older people with cognitive impairment who have been hospitalised in an acute care setting. A key aim of this review was to use thematic analysis and problematisation to challenge assumptions underpinning the current falls literature and to bring into consideration alternate foci of research and new approaches to falls research. An innovative approach is used to generate descriptive and interpretive summaries (...) of the literature which are presented graphically to reveal the prevailing themes and assumptions within. It is argued that currently, falls research in the context of cognitive impairment is constrained by scientism. Meta‐paradigmatic approaches, which have the potential to provide a better understanding of why falls may or may not occur among this particular subgroup of older people, are proposed as an alternative. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore and interpret the diverse subject of positions, or roles, that nurses construct when caring for patients in their own home. Ten interviews were analysed and interpreted using discourse analysis. The findings show that these nurses working in home care constructed two positions: `guest' and `professional'. They had to make a choice between these positions because it was impossible to be both at the same time. An ethics of care and an ethics of (...) justice were present in these positions, both of which create diverse ethical appeals, that is, implicit demands to perform according to a guest or to a professional norm. (shrink)

While health promotion is widely acknowledged as a practice field where multidisciplinary teamwork is important, within nursing's discipline‐specific literature, a strong argument can be discerned regarding the profession's belief that it has a clear and unique role to play in that field. Yet rarely is this unique role, how it arises, and specifically how its effects are to be demarcated, attended to within the discipline‐specific literature. Two philosophical perspectives on science are presented and we demonstrate the extent to which these (...) two perspectives influence nursing scholarship, including nursing practice within the field of health promotion. We then go on to argue that, for nurses to sustain their claim to a unique and important contribution within health promotion, clear articulation of the philosophical premises underpinning practice methodologies is warranted. Specifically we argue the importance of such clarity within the context of an analysis of the discourse of multidisciplinary practice as a strategy for avoiding confronting the ways in which bio‐medical authority has already significantly demarcated how health promotion practice can proceed. (shrink)

During the last 3 years the interface between geography and nursing has provided fertile ground for research. Not only has a conceptual emphasis on space and place provided nurse researchers with a robust and subtly different way to deconstruct and articulate nursing environments, but also their studies have provided a much needed focus on certain areas of health‐care, and in particular clinical practice, not currently prioritized by health geographers. We argue that, as something that is forcing fundamental re‐considerations of the (...) nature of both nursing and geography, cyberspace is a particularly important phenomenon that lies comparatively under‐researched at this interface. To encourage some interest in researching nursing and cyberspace through a geographical lens, and at least to showcase a range of potentially useful and transportable concepts, we provide an overview of some of the key debates pertaining to cyberspace developed by human geographers, and make some initial and tentative connections to nursing. (shrink)

A ‘good enough’ nurse: supporting patients in a fertility unitIn this paper, I discuss the findings of an ethnographic study of a fertility unit. I suggest that caring as ‘emotional awareness’ and ‘non‐caring’ as ‘emotional distance’ may be forms of nursing akin to Fabricius’s (1991) arguments around the ‘good enough’ nurse. This paper critiques caring theories and contributes to the debates over the nature of caring in nursing. I discuss the implications raised for nurses if patients want a practical approach (...) to caring and do not expect an emotionally intimate relationship from nurses. (shrink)

Although traditionally, nursing research has paid little attention to geographical approaches, recent years have witnessed some initial research interest in the dynamic between nursing, space and place. Such research potentially represents the foundations of what may be termed a ‘geography of nursing’. Although, to date, some novel and valuable perspectives have been gained into the spatial features of nursing, no consideration has been given to the theoretical development of, and basis for, a geography of nursing. Furthermore, no consideration has been (...) given to philosophical heritage; the treatment of space and place in human geography and the insights that this may provide for the new field of research. In this context, this paper provides an historical review of geographical research and traces the evolution of how space and place have been conceptualized and operationalized by it. The paper outlines the emergence of a health geography subdiscipline and its own changing and diverse perspectives. In the final section, the central themes of the current geography of nursing are considered and, reflecting back on the theoretical concerns of contemporary human geography, the paper outlines some philosophies and theories on which future geography of nursing could be based. From a disciplinary perspective, one potential role of the geography of nursing is argued to be the maintenance of the relationship between health geography and mainstream health service and medical concerns, but in a place‐sensitive, patient‐sensitive and qualitative form. (shrink)

Technology is pervasive and overwhelming in the intensive care setting. It has the power to inform and direct the nursing care of critically ill patients. Technology changes the moral and social dynamics within nurse—patient encounters. Nurses use technology as the main reference point to interpret and evaluate clinical patient outcomes. This shapes nurses’ understanding and the kind of care provided. Technology inserts itself between patients and nurses, thus distancing nurses from patients. This situates nurses into positions of power, granting them (...) epistemic authority, which constrains them as moral agents. Technology serves to categorize and marginalize patients’ illness experience. In this article, moral agency is examined within the technologically-mediated context of the intensive care unit. Uncritical use of technology has a negative impact on patient care and nurses’ view of patients, thus limiting moral agency. Through examination of technology as it frames cardiac patients, it is demonstrated how technology changes the way nurses understand and conceptualize moral agency. This article offers a new perspective on the ethical discussion of technology and its impact on nurses’ moral agency. Employing reflective analysis using the technique of embodied reflection may help to ensure that patients remain at the centre of nurses’ moral practice. Embodied reflection invites nurses critically to examine how technology has reshaped conceptualization, understanding, and the underlying motivation governing nurses’ moral agency. (shrink)

Although a large body of literature exists propounding the importance of space in aged care and care of the older person with dementia, there is, however, only limited exploration of the ‘acute care space’ as a particular type of space with archetypal constraints that maybe unfavourable to older people with cognitive impairment and nurses wanting to provide care that is person‐centred. In this article, we explore concepts of space and examine the implications of these for the delivery of care to (...) older people who are cognitively impaired. Our exploration is grounded in theorisations of space offered by key geographers and phenomenologists, but also draws on how space has been constructed within the nursing literature that refers specifically to acute care. We argue that space, once created, can be created and that nursing has a significant role to play in the process of its recreation in the pursuit of care that is person‐centred. We conclude by introducing an alternative logic of space aimed at promoting the creation of more salutogenic spaces that invokes a sense of sanctuary, safeness, and inclusion, all of which are essential if the care provided to the older person with cognitive impairment is apposite to their needs. The concept of ‘person‐centred space’ helps to crystallize the relationship between space and person‐centred care and implies more intentional manipulation of space that is more conducive to caring and healing. Significantly, it marks a return to Nightingale's wisdom, that is, to put the person in the best possible conditions for nature to act upon them. (shrink)

This study focuses on nursing in an inpatient mental health setting. Its analytic structure follows from a previous review of nursing studies by Allen, which did not include studies of mental health nursing. Allen's review concluded that the nurses’ role could be understood as that of healthcare intermediary and that nurses’ work could be analysed as eight interrelated bundles of activity. These bundles include such matters as managing the work of others. This study aims to assess the fit of this (...) model to mental health nursing and to add to the body of work concerning the social organisation of nursing. The research materials discussed are derived from an ethnography of a psychiatric unit. The analytic framework employed leads us to conclude that the work of mental health nurses can be understood, too, as that of the healthcare intermediary. However, one bundle is found to fit less well and this is attributed to the fragile uncertainty of knowledge in psychiatry. The use of an additional bundle to describe in‐context nursing interventions is suggested. It is argued that getting to grips with the reflexive relationship between individual patient care and the social organisation in which this is practised is essential for any practice development efforts. (shrink)

Spatial thought is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance in nursing. Building on a long disciplinary tradition of conceptualizing and studying ‘nursing environment’, the past twenty years has witnessing the establishment and refinement of explicitly geographical nursing research. This article – part one in a series of two – reviews the perspectives taken to date, ranging from historical precedent in classical nursing theory through to positivistic spatial science, political economy, and social constructivism in contemporary inquiry. This discussion sets up part two, (...) which considers the potential of non‐representational theory for framing future studies. (shrink)