Nurses Writing about Psychiatric Nurses' Involvement in Killings during the Nazi Era: A Preliminary Discourse Analysis.

Nurses actively killed people in Nazi Europe between 1939 and 1945. The so-called 'science of eugenics' underpinned Nazi ideology, used to further the Nazi racist agenda. Edicts sanctioned selection and medically supervised killing of people, and nurses, principally in mental hospitals, participated in the killing of between 100­300 thousand patients. Erroneously termed 'euthanasia', there were three phases: the initial programme involving children, the T4 adult programme, and 'wild euthanasia'. Unofficial killings also took place before 1939. This paper uses discourse analysis to map and analyse published texts which explore the role of nurses in Nazi Germany. The aim is to identify its characteristics as a body of literature, to note strengths and weaknesses, emphases and silences, and to note aspects that need further exploration. It acknowledges that how these events are to be understood and represented in contemporary discourse constitutes a significant problem for historians of nursing.

The wartime experience of civilian nurses in Iran-Iraq war, 1980-1988: an historical research.

BACKGROUND: During the 8 years of Iran-Iraq war, the work of Iranian nurses was essential and efficiently performed, and played a very important role in maintaining the wellbeing of the forces. A review of nurses' activities reveals their experiences and the nature of their activities, an area of study that has not been given due consideration. METHOD: By adopting the oral history method and in-depth interviews with the participating nurses it was possible to demonstrate the significance and humanistic nature of their work. FINDINGS: The majority of the health care assistants and nurses who joined the armed forces, despite not having prior training in this area of nursing, were able to adapt themselves to the situation very quickly and perform their task successfully. CONCLUSION: Nurses' efforts and experiences and their outstanding achievement, contributes to our understanding of wartime nursing.

Nurses experiences in chemical emergency departments: Iran-Iraq war, 1980-1988.

BACKGROUND: Nurses have played a major role in taking care of the wounded across the centuries. One of the most important roles of Iranian nurses in wartime has been working in chemical emergency departments. This study investigated the nature of nursing practice in chemical emergency departments created in the context of the Iran-Iraq War fought during 1980-1988. METHOD: This is a history methodology design with oral history and in-depth interview to detect nurses 'actual experiences in chemical emergency departments while taking care of the chemically injured military forces. FINDINGS: Today's nurses emphasize finding new ways to fulfill the present nursing needs and to combine theory and practice in an appropriate framework. Having a retrospective approach to utilize nurses' experience can well clarify the future way to achieve this goal. CONCLUSION: This study revealed the way the nurses prepared to take care of the chemically injured in miserable situations and their practice in chemical emergency departments. It highlighted their awareness of wartime nursing and the challenging experiences it brings.

Nominal group technique: an effective method for obtaining group consensus.

This paper aims to demonstrate the versatility and application of nominal group technique as a method for generating priority information. Nominal group technique was used in the context of four focus groups involving clinical experts from the emergency department (ED) and obstetric and midwifery areas of a busy regional hospital to assess the triage and management of pregnant women in the ED. The data generated were used to create a priority list of discussion triggers for the subsequent Participatory Action Research Group. This technique proved to be a productive and efficient data collection method which produced information in a hierarchy of perceived importance and identified real world problems. This information was vital in initiating the participatory action research project and is recommended as an effective and reliable data collection method, especially when undertaking research with clinical experts.

Deconstructing the DSM-IV-TR: a critical perspective.

This paper examines and offers a critique of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), underlying principles and assumptions, and the nature and consequences of its nosological framework. The reason for this critique is to look at the rationale for some of the diagnostic categories and also why some categories are retained, including some of the long-standing diagnostic groups, such as schizophrenia. It is not the intention here to rehearse the problems of biological psychiatric thinking, nor argue the strengths and weaknesses of the DSM-IV-TR in its definitions and descriptions of particular syndromes and illnesses. The ideas presented here derive from a range of previous research that argued that the DSM-IV-TR colludes in a system of psychiatric care in which all people, by virtue of characteristically human foibles and idiosyncrasies, are potentially classifiable into a variety of diagnostic mental health categories. In the present study, it was argued that because of resource constraints, professional dispute, and public concern, the major criterion for attracting a formal diagnosis is not classifiability according to the DSM-IV-TR, but rather, that of 'social risk', defined in terms of risk to oneself and/or others and embodying obvious social control functions. Here, we expand and develop some of these ideas, and relate them more specifically to insights offered by critical or deconstructive psychology and the development of the forthcoming the DSM-V.

Violence, zero tolerance and the subversion of professional practice.

Assaults on health care staff have been a fact of life since the earliest years of organised health services, but it is only in recent years that governments have begun to acknowledge the problem. Assaults not only inflict physical and emotional injury, but undermine morale, create a climate of fear, and subvert the quality of care. They are also costly in terms of lost labour, compensation, and legal and procedural expenses. The response to violence in health care settings has thus far ranged from what might be called the 'Ostrich position', in which it is simply ignored, to training in self-defence, the deployment of security staff in clinical areas, conflict resolution training and, more recently, the policy of 'zero tolerance'. This paper examines the rationale for zero tolerance policies, drawing on their origins and applications in the United States and Britain. It suggests that zero tolerance is an ineffective response to violence in health care settings, and its adoption by authorities in Australia should be rejected. It is further argued, that resource allocation and marginalisation are identifiable and modifiable factors contributing to violence in our health care systems.

An overview of structuration theory and its usefulness for nursing research.

Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration is a theory of social action, which claims that society should be understood in terms of action and structure; a duality rather than two separate entities. This paper introduces some of the central characteristics of structuration theory, presenting a conceptual framework that helps to explore how people produce the systems and structures that shape their practice. By understanding how people produce and reproduce structures, then there is the potential for changing them. Criticisms that have been raised about the theory are introduced, followed by examples of how the theory might be useful to nursing research. Structuration theory can be employed to explore how nurses produce, reproduce, and transform nursing practice through social interaction across time and space.

Improving the early detection of children with subtle developmental problems.

This article briefly reviews the recent literature identifying the possible reasons why children with subtle developmental problems are passing through health care systems undetected. It offers some explanations as to why consequently, in many Western societies, a large number of these children are not identified by health professionals until they reach school age. Early identification is one of the challenges facing health visitors or child health nurses, and it is suggested that if they can utilize the knowledge and experience of parents, the opportunities for early identification and intervention would be dramatically improved.

Academics and practitioners: nurses as intellectuals.

Academics and practitioners: nurses as intellectuals In the author's experience, nurse educators working in universities generally accept that they are 'academics', but dismiss suggestions that they are 'intellectuals' because they see it as a pretentious description referring to a small number of academics and aesthetes who inhabit a conceptual world beyond the imaginative capacity of most other people. This paper suggests that the concept of the 'intellectual', if not the word itself, be admitted into nursing discourse through the adoption of a non-élitist Gramscian understanding, similar to the more recently formulated conception of the reflective practitioner. According to the Italian Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci, intellectuals are those people who develop ways in which to construct the conditions of their own existence, a possibility he believed was open to all. It is suggested that, from a Gramscian perspective, all nurses are intellectuals to varying degrees, and nurse educators should not only be nurturing their own intellectualism but also the potential for intellectualism as it exists within each individual. The ways in which this project are related to Habermasian critical theory are also briefly outlined.