Applying a Foucauldian lens to the Canadian code of ethics for registered nurses as a discursive mechanism for nurses professional identity

Abstract

This study examines the Canadian Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses as a discursive mechanism for shaping nurses' professional identity using a Foucauldian lens. Nurses are considered essential in healthcare, yet the nursing profession has struggled to be recognized for its discipline-specific knowledge and expertise and, as such, has remained the subject of and subject to the dominant discourses within healthcare and society generally. Developing a professional identity in nursing begins after the necessary education and training are achieved and embodies the profession's history, values, code of ethics, and expectations of the profession that distinguish it from other professions. Since nurses' professional identity is shaped through discourse, it raises the question of whether there are spaces to reconceptualize nurses' subject position within health care. Since professional identity is considered the embodiment of knowledge and practice, the code of ethics bears examination both for its effect on nurses' professional identity and as a potential site from which to challenge hegemonic assumptions. This article discusses the concept of professional identity in nursing and its development through the discursive formations in the code of ethics. The sources of power/knowledge are examined as both mechanisms of control and as spaces for change.

Certified Registered Nurse Anaesthetists’ and Critical Care Registered Nurses’ perception of knowledge/power in teamwork with Anaesthesiologists in Sweden: a mixed-method study

“…For Foucault, power comes from settings such as workplaces where subjects (like patients, nurses, and physicians) form power relations through discursive formations in daily interactions with others. In the discursive formation, Foucault sees discourses as contingent rules, beliefs, and practices that produce and organize knowledge and power to create subjects and the realities in which they live [ 35 ]. Foucault considered power and knowledge as closely intervened, writing it as “power/knowledge”, and argued that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, stating that the power determines the production of knowledge [ 34 ].…”