Social justice in Canadian nursing professional documents: A Foucauldian discourse analysis

Nursing Inquiry 31 (4):e12653 (2024)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Social justice is widely advanced as a central nursing value, and yet conceptual understandings of social justice remain inconsistent and vague. Further, despite persistently articulated commitments to upholding social justice, the profession of nursing has been implicated in perpetuating inequities in health and health care. In this context, it is essential to establish both conceptual clarity and tangible guidance for nurses in enacting practices to advance social justice—particularly through regulatory, education and accreditation documents that shape the nursing profession. This Foucauldian discourse analysis examines how social justice is discursively positioned within nursing professional documents in Canada, and illustrates that social justice was largely discursively excluded from these texts. Where social justice discourses were invoked, we identified that four central discursive patterns obscured and de‐centred this nursing value: (i) Vague language undermined professional commitments to social justice; (ii) Constructions of knowledge and awareness de‐emphasized practice; (iii) Individualism discourses minimized institutional/professional responsibility; and (iv) Aspirational language obscured present action. Extending from this analysis, we contend that the nursing profession must re‐examine how social justice is understood and articulated, and call for a re‐conceptualization of social justice grounded in nursing practice toward remediating inequities in health and health care.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,634

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Ethics in professional life: virtues for health and social care.Sarah Banks - 2009 - New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Edited by Ann Gallagher.

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-08-07

Downloads
13 (#1,394,351)

6 months
11 (#303,202)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?