Crazy Making: The Institutional Relations of Undergraduate Nursing in the Reproduction of Biomedical Psychiatry

Abstract

AbstractUndergraduate mental health nursing education has been extensively discussed among nursing scholars, educators, and curriculum experts. While various perspectives have weighed in on mental health nursing education in Canada, little attention has been paid to understanding the relationship between biomedical psychiatry and undergraduate nursing education. Using institutional ethnography, this article examines the social and textual relations which characterize this relationship. Beginning in the everyday teaching and learning work of faculty members and nursing students in a collaborative baccalaureate nursing program, the social organization of mental health nursing education is explicated and the textual processes are outlined. Findings suggest the presence of an institutional and discursive dominance of mental health nursing education by biomedical psychiatry. Implications for nursing education and recommendations to better balance mental health nursing education are outlined.