L’ Expression de la sexualité de patients masculins en milieux de psychiatrie légale

La situation actuelle en milieux de psychiatrie légale ne permet pas aux patients d’exprimer pleinement leur sexualité durant leur hospitalisation. Dans certains cas, les relations sexuelles sont tout simplement interdites. Non seulement, les politiques institutionnelles en place briment, en partie, les personnes dans l’exercice de leurs droits fondamentaux elles manquent aussi de clarté au regard de la façon dont le personnel infirmier devrait gérer les besoins des patients. Une étude ethnographique critique a été conduite dans un centre de psychiatrie légale canadien. La collecte de données a inclus des entrevues semi-structurées, la collecte de documents institutionnels et l’observation du milieu. Nos résultats s’articulent autour de trois thèmes: situer la sexualité en contexte médico-légal, faire l’expérience de la sexualité en tant que patient et gouverner la sexualité des patients. Les données récoltées permettent de constater que ces discours façonnent les croyances et les actions des patients, des infirmières et des autres professionnels tels que les psychiatres, les éducateurs et les psychologues

Organizations As Evil Structures

Nursing practice in forensic psychiatry opens new horizons in nursing. This complex, professional, nursing practice involves the coupling of two contradictory socioprofessional mandates: to punish and to provide care. The purpose of this chapter is to present nursing practice in a disciplinary setting as a problem of governance. A Foucauldian perspective allows us to understand the way forensic psychiatric nursing is involved in the governance of mentally ill criminals through a vast array of power techniques (sovereign, disciplinary, and pastoral), which posit nurses as “subjects of power.” These nurses are also “objects of power” in that nursing practice is constrained by formal and informal regulations of the forensic psychiatry context. As an object of “governmental technologies,” the nursing staff becomes the body onto which a process of conforming to the customs of the forensic psychiatric milieu is dictated and inscribed

Killing for the state: the darkest side of American nursing

The aim of this article is to bring to the attention of the international nursing community the discrepancy between a pervasive ‘caring’ nursing discourse and the most unethical nursing practice in the United States. In this article, we present a duality: the conflict in American prisons between nursing ethics and the killing machinery. The US penal system is a setting in which trained healthcare personnel practices the extermination of life. We look upon the sanitization of death work as an application of healthcare professionals’ skills and knowledge and their appropriation by the state to serve its ends. A review of the states’ death penalty statutes shows that healthcare workers are involved in the capital punishment process and shielded by American laws (and to a certain extent by professional boards through their inaction). We also argue that the law\u27s language often masks that involvement, and explain how states further that duplicity behind legal formalisms. In considering the important role healthcare providers, namely nurses and physicians, play in administering death to the condemned, we assert that nurses and physicians are part of the states’ penal machinery in America. Nurses and physicians (as carriers of scientific knowledge, and also as agents of care) are intrinsic to the American killing enterprise. Healthcare professionals who take part in execution protocols are state functionaries who approach the condemned body as angels of death: they constitute an extension of the state which exercises its sovereign power over captive prisoners

Caring to Death: Health Care Professionals and Capital Punishment

The aim of this article is to describe the role of health care professionals in the capital punishment process. The relationship between the protocol of capital punishment in the United States and the use of health care professionals to carry out that task has been overlooked in the literature on punishment. Yet for some time, the operation of the medical sciences in prison have been `part of a disciplinary strategy\u27 `intrinsic to the development of power relationships\u27. Many capital punishment statutes require medical personnel to be present at, if not actively involved in, executions. Through analyses of these statutes, show the degree to which these professionals have become part of the state\u27s executive apparatus

Breaking Bodies Into Pieces: Time, Torture and Bio-Power

This article is an attempt to comprehend the bureaucratic phenomenon of the deathwatch, the last 24 hours of a prisoner’s life, stressing the theoretical applications scholars can make to the study of docile bodies on death row. Because years of work are necessary to obtain obedience from condemned inmates, health care professionals lend more than an aura of legitimacy to the capital punishment process. As an integral part of the prison and capital punishment, they provide stability, reliability, and the means to achieve the goals of peaceful executions. The ultimate objective of utilizing health care professionals is the sanitization of penal practice and penal language to effect the complete absence of resistance from the condemned

Career Advancement: The Experiences of Minority Nurses in Accessing Leadership Positions in a Tertiary Care Setting

Minority nurses are underrepresented in leadership roles in the Canadian healthcare system. The purpose of this study was to explore MNs’ perceptions and experiences with regards to career development and MNs in leadership positions. Twelve nurses, four Caucasian and eight from the Caribbean and Africa in a tertiary care setting were recruited through purposive sampling. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted, transcribed, coded, and analyzed using critical ethnography. Findings revealed lack of social support, of equal opportunities, of recognition and of trust. Despite negative experiences, minority nurses recognized the value of their work experience at the hospital where they were employed. Committing to a diverse workforce in leadership roles can ultimately have an effect on patient care. Minority nurses’ leadership is needed to provide role models and to ensure the delivery of competent care to diverse populations