Killing for the state: the darkest side of American nursing

Abstract

The aim of this article is to bring to the attention of the international nursing community the discrepancy between a pervasive 'caring' nursing discourse and a most unethical nursing practice in the United States. In this article, we present a duality: the conflict in American prisons between nursing ethics and the killing machinery. The US penal system is a setting in which trained healthcare personnel practice the extermination of life. We look upon the sanitization of deathwork as an application of healthcare professionals' skills and knowledge and their appropriation by the state to serve its ends. A review of the states' death penalty statutes shows that healthcare workers are involved in the capital punishment process and shielded by American laws (and to a certain extent by professional boards through their inaction). We also argue that the law's language often masks that involvement; and explain how states further that duplicity behind legal formalisms. In considering the important role healthcare providers, namely nurses and physicians, play in administering death to the condemned, we assert that nurses and physicians are part of the states' penal machinery in America. Nurses and physicians (as carriers of scientific knowledge, and also as agents of care) are intrinsic to the American killing enterprise. Healthcare professionals who take part in execution protocols are state functionaries who approach the condemned body as angels of death: they constitute an extension of the state which exercises its sovereign power over captive prisoners.

Postmodernism and physiotherapy research

“…I drew heavily on the work of people like David Armstrong, Julianne Cheek, Dave Holmes and Sarah Nettleton, who had done similar investigations in dentistry, medicine and nursing. [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] Slowly, analytical themes emerged that had their origins in the practices of the therapists at Breathing Works, but could be linked directly to particular notions of discipline and governmentality articulated by Foucault. What became clear was that Breathing Works' resistance was directed at orthodox physiotherapy.…”

The Politics of Nursing Care

“…This could be when nurses physically or chemically restrain psychiatric patients, when they forcibly administer treatment to individuals with infectious diseases (e.g., tuberculosis, gonorrhea, etc. ), or when they are involved in state-sponsored executions, as occurs in the American penitentiary system (Holmes & Federman, 2003).…”

Sovereign power, spectacle and punishment: a critical analysis of the use of the seclusion room

“…We recognize that not all nurses who use seclusion abandon or neglect their patients, but we believe that seclusion must be questioned when it is implemented as a punitive technology. When used as a form of punishment, we assert that seclusion is one of the most brutal interventions within the nursing domain (considering that torture and capital punishment are the extreme ending points of excessive nursing power) (Alty & Mason, 1994;Federman & Holmes, 2000;Holmes & Federman, 2003;Nelson & Holmes, 2003;Johnson, 1998). As such, exploring the use of the seclusion room from the Foucauldian concept of sovereign power may contribute to a better understanding of this institutionalized form of punishment.…”