This study used mixed methods to examine the experiences and health of rural, young adult women (N = 100) who self-reported past experience of physical, emotional and verbal, sexual, and relational abuse in adolescent dating relationships. Few studies have examined the lasting health ramifications of adolescent dating abuse adolescent dating abuse in rural populations, and almost no mixed methods studies have explored adolescent dating abuse. Participants completed questionnaires on demographics, relationship behaviors, and mental health symptoms. A subsample (n = 10) of participants also completed semi-structured, in-depth interviews with the primary investigator. Results suggest that depressive symptoms and self-rating of health in these women are associated with particular kinds and severity of abusive experiences, and that adolescent dating abuse has ramifications for health and development beyond the duration of the original relationship. Self-rated health (SRH) was inversely associated with abusive behaviors in the relationship, whereas depressive symptoms were positively correlated with such behaviors. Self-rated health was also negatively correlated with depressive symptoms. The results of this study represent an important step toward establishing lifetime health risks posed by adolescent dating abuse.
Abstract This paper opens with first‐hand accounts of critical care medical interventions in which detainees, in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are brought to the emergency department for treatment. This case dramatizes the extent to which the provision of ethical and acceptable nursing care is jeopardized by federal law enforcement paradigms. Drawing on the scholarship of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, this paper offers a theoretical account of the power dynamics that inform the health care of patients who find themselves caught in the custodial scaffolding of a vast immigration and detention apparatus. It offers an analysis of the display of sovereign and biopolitical power over the lives (and deaths) of detainees (Foucault), as well as the ways these individuals are reduced to “bare life” under the political pretext of an emergency or “state of exception” (Agamben). Our purpose here is both theoretical and practical: to better understand the often hidden agency or impersonal “will” exercised by the immigrant detention system, but also to equip clinicians in these and cognate facilities (e.g., prisons) with the critical tools by which they might better navigate incommensurable paradigms (i.e., care vs. custody) in order to deliver the best care while upholding their ethical duties as a care provider. This is all the more pressing because hospitals are not sanctuaries and given the incursion of federal law enforcement agents, nurses may find themselves conscripted as de facto agents of the state.
Introduction: The purpose of this study was to explore how women of color affiliated with a large public university in the United States evaluated involving authorities in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) and/or sexual assault (SA) and to discover if structural stressors such as racism or sexism influenced their thinking. Methodology: Surveys on perceived ethnic discrimination, depression, trauma history, stress, social support, resilience, and sleep disturbance were completed by 87 self-identified women of color. All women also participated in one of several focus groups on IPV and SA. Results: Roughly half of participants had experienced SA and about a third experienced IPV. Participants identifying as Latinx/Hispanic or Black/African American reported the greatest experiences of structural stressors and also felt there was not always a potential safety gain with reporting IPV and/or SA. Discussion: The results of this study suggest universities must create more culturally competent environs of safety for women of color.
Through a review of philosophical and theoretical constructs, this paper offers insight and guidance as to ways in which nurse leaders may operationalize advocacy and an adherence to nursing's core ethical values.The US health care system works in opposition to core nursing values. Nurse leaders are obliged to advocate for the preservation of ethical care delivery.This paper draws upon the philosophies of Fromm, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari to critically review the functions of nurse leaders within a capitalist paradigm.Key emergent issues in the paper include health care and capitalism and the nurse leader's obligations towards advocacy.The nurse leader acts as parrhèsia in viewing truth telling as a duty critical to improving the lives of patients. Ramifications of the decisions by those in power have even greater impact in institutions that serve those with little to no political agency.The nurse leader has a freedom and platform that their patients do not and must take the courageous risk of choosing to speak. This paper serves as a call to action for nurse leaders to urgently address the current state of US health outcomes.
Abstract The everyday expressions of nursing practices are driven by their entanglement in complex flows of social, cultural, political and economic interests. Early expressions of trained nursing practice in the United States and Europe reflect claims of moral, spiritual and clinical exceptionalism. They were both imposed upon—and internalized by—nursing pioneers. These claims were associated with an endogenous narrative of discipline and its physical manifestation in early nursing schools and hospitals, which functioned as “total institutions.” By contrast, the external forces—diffuse yet pervasive—impacting upon contemporary nursing more closely align with the power dynamics explored in Gilles Deleuze's concept of the Society of Control . The example of sensor technology and telemetric monitoring of nurses’ locations in the clinical setting exemplifies the intense presence of surveillance, performance metrics and the “rationalization” of nursing practice. It falls upon nurses to recognize, accept or challenge these dynamics in order to shape the future of nursing practice into a discipline which embodies our values and priorities.
The image of the hospital is presented to the public as a place of healing. Though the oft-criticized total institutions of the past have been notably dismantled, the totalizing practices therein are now operationalized in the health care system. Through the lens of Erving Goffman, this article offers ways in which health care institutions operationalize totalizing practices, contributing to the mortification of patients and nurses alike in service to the bureaucratic machine. This article examines the ways in which totalizing practices may disrupt the agency of both patients and nurses alike.
Although numerous training options exist for sexual assault nurse examiner certification, most focus on specific certification-related content rather than on creating a holistic preparation for sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) practice. Holistic preparation may be preferable for SANE trainees who are early in their nursing careers or who have practiced in limited clinical environments. This article describes a holistic training approach implemented at a SANE training site funded by the Advanced Nursing Education initiative of the Health Resources and Services Administration. Training covers hands-on pelvic and anal examinations, community education, underserved communities, self-care, and other topics that support newly trained SANEs in establishing and maintaining practice. This content has prepared trainees for a wide variety of patient encounters as well as for engaging with the community. With this approach, our trainees have the opportunity to enhance their ability to provide SANE care and to provide additional resources within their primary practice environments.