Search

Based on our respective research programs (psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, public health, HIV/AIDS, harm reduction) this article aims to use purposely non-conventional means to present the substantial contribution of poststructuralist perspectives to knowledge development in nursing science in general and in our current research in particular. More specifically, we call on the work of Michel Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari to politicize nursing science using examples from our empirical research programs with marginal and often highly marginalized populations. We discuss the concepts of power, discourse, and resistance to illustrate the essential contribution of poststructuralism to marginal, even "nomadic", nursing research., (© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Nurse practitioners (NPs), as advanced practice nurses, have evolved over the years to become recognized as an important and growing trend in Canada and worldwide. In spite of sound evidence as to the effectiveness of NPs in primary care and other care settings, role implementation and integration continue to pose significant challenges. This article utilizes postcolonial theory, as articulated by Homi Bhabha, to examine and challenge traditional ideologies and structures that have shaped the development, implementation and integration of the NP role to this day. Specifically, we utilize Bhabha's concepts of third space, hybridity, identity and agency in order to further conceptualize the nurse practitioner role, to examine how the role challenges some of the inherent assumptions within the healthcare system and to explore how development of each to these concepts may prove useful in integration of nurse practitioners within the healthcare system. Our analysis casts light on the importance of a broader, power structure analysis and illustrates how colonial assumptions operating within our current healthcare system entrench, expand and re-invent, as well as mask the structures and practices that serve to impede nurse practitioner full integration and contributions. Suggestions are made for future analysis and research., (© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Treatment adherence issues in the context of chronic illnesses have become an important concern worldwide and a top priority in the field of health-care. The development of devices that will allow healthcare providers to track treatment adherence and monitor physiological parameters with exact precision raises important questions and concerns. The aim of this study is to interrogate the use of these new technological devices which allow for previously unavailable data to be recorded on an ongoing basis and transmitted via a tiny microchip inserted into the body. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, we analyze how this anatomo-political and bio-political instrument serves to discipline chronically ill individuals and govern the health of entire populations who suffer from chronic conditions. To support our analysis, this article comprises three sections. First, we provide an overview of treatment adherence and technotherapeutics. Then, we explain how technotherapeutics concern the government of bodies and conducts at the individual level and population level more generally. Lastly, we provide an example of how this analysis can be connected to routine nursing practice in the field of HIV., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

In 1998, the US Supreme Court first held that asymptomatic HIV infection constituted a disability when it ruled on the case of Bragdon v. Abbott. The use of yet another label (disabled) to identify women living with HIV has been rarely (if ever) questioned. While we do value the use of this label as an anti-discriminatory strategy, we believe that there is a need to examine how language and more specifically, the use of words such as disability, limitation, and impairment may create new forms of identities for women living with HIV. Using this legal case as a starting point, the goal of this paper is to critically examine the 'fabrication' of asymptomatic HIV infection as a disability. Grounded in a feminist poststructuralist perspective, this paper exposes the relationship between language, social institutions, subjectivity, and power in the construction of difference. By doing so, it addresses the identification of women living with HIV/AIDS as disabled and the self-differentiation process that they must go through in order to live as normally as possible.