Dave Mercer

• PhD, MA, BA (Hons), RMN, PGCE
• Lecturer at University of Liverpool

Introduction The three card game, sometimes called find the queen, is a classic confidence trick, typically taking place on an impromptu table top, set up on pavement or street corner. The tricksters usually operate in teams, pulling in punters and ‘losing’ games with their fellows to persuade prospective speculators the game is winnable. For our t...

In a climate of deregulation, brutal cuts to spending on health and social care and wider welfare, and the privileging of a ‘free market’ economy, the NHS is in a ‘critical condition’. Recent ‘reforms’ to the NHS and healthcare education are written in the language of neoliberalism, a global philosophy premised on celebration of a privatised econom...

Purpose – “Inclusivity” and “empowerment” are central concepts in the philosophy of nursing practice and education. Recent professional concern has focused on the need to embed compassion in healthcare cultures where practice contributes to learning. The purpose of this paper is to explore an innovative partnership approach to undergraduate placeme...

In response to the International Journal of Health Policy and Management (IJHPM) editorial, this commentary adds to the debate about ethical dimensions of compassionate care in UK service provision. It acknowledges the importance of the original paper, and attempts to explore some of the issues that are raised in the context of nursing practice, re...

This article reports findings from a qualitative study into how forensic nurses, and male personality disordered sexual offenders, talked about "pornography" in one U.K. high-security hospital. Research rationale was rooted in current professional and political debates, adopting a discourse analytic design to situate the project in a clinical conte...

The principle of compassionate care is increasingly seen as the core element of good nursing practice. However, recent media reports have focused on the "compassion deficit". We carried out a review of national and international evidence on core professional values, which showed that caring and compassion are inherent nursing values. While the deve...

This article presents findings from a discourse analytic study into the constructive nature and textual variations of language in a high-security hospital. It explores how mental health nurses, and men convicted of sexual offences who also have a diagnosis of personality disorder, talked about pornography and sexual crime in the context of forensic...

Mental health nurses have a critical stake in resisting the right-wing ideology of British fascism. Particularly concerning is the contemporary effort of the British National Party (BNP) to gain credibility and electoral support by the strategic re-packaging of a racist and divisive political manifesto. Evidence that some public sector workers are...

Keywords:forensic nursing

This case study elaborates the aftermath of the Blom-Cooper Inquiry (1992), which forced the special hospital, Ashworth, into a radical 'culture change'. To this end, two groups of external consultants--a management consultancy and a professional task force--were introduced into the hospital. Newly established ward managers were to spearhead the or...

This case study elaborates the aftermath of the Blom-Cooper Inquiry (1992), which forced the special hospital, Ashworth, into a radical ‘culture change’. To this end, two groups of external consultants—a management consultancy and a professional task force—were introduced into the hospital. Newly established ward managers were to spearhead the orga...

This paper outlines the development and convergence of forensic science and secure psychiatric services in the UK, locating the professionalization of forensic nursing within a complex web of political, economic, and ideological structures. It is suggested that a stagnation of the therapeutic enterprise in high and medium security provision has wit...

The results of a Q methodological study of professional understandings of the notion of risk in mental health services within the UK are discussed in relation to the relevance for staff training and quality assurance. The study attempted to access the diversity of understandings of risk issues amongst a multi-professional group of staff (n = 60) at...

Forensic nursing is a product of medicalized criminality, where social and moral issues are managed within a psychiatric ideology. The narrative accounts of nursing staff reflect a tension between scientific and lay interpretations of offending behavior. A nonprofessional discourse about "evil" presents a challenge to the structural and clinical cr...

The results of a Q methodological study of professional understandings of the notion of risk in mental health services within the UK are discussed in relation to the relevance for staff training and quality assurance. The study attempted to access the diversity of understandings of risk issues amongst a multi-professional group of staff (n = 60) at...

Dual Diagnosis is becoming a fashionable term to describe and demarcate groups of service users who have severe and enduring mental health problems and concurrently use substances. To date, the term has been used loosely creating problems of definition and targeting of services. It is argued that the problems with dual diagnosis do not end at this...

The subject of women within forensic services cannot be dealt with in isolation from other factors and agendas important in the reproduction of distinct and discriminatory power relations. In common with generic developments, and in part because of its relative newness, forensic nursing has aspired to achieve a specific professional identity. Given...

Within the concept of rehabilitation there looms large a fundamental question: from what, to what? From madness to sanity, from bad to good, from sickness to health, from abnormal to normal, from irrational to rational, and so on, are all tenets constitutive of this positional question.

This book is about silence. The medicalisation, or more specifically the psychiatrisation, of the criminal has been a creeping and sweeping force for 200 years (Foucault, 1978). Its justification and legitimation has relied upon acquiescence, dependence and silence: acquiescence because of a need for loyalty to its cause, dependence on its agents f...

The majority of historical writing on the development of psychiatry is based on the premise that its progress is benevolent, compassionate and rational. Most of these analyses would also argue that the conquest of insanity by scientific psychiatry, and the usurping of madness from the clutches of God or the devil is superfluous, and certainly incom...

The genesis of sex-offender therapy in penal and psychiatric settings is part of the ongoing trend towards medicalising criminal behaviour. It has been accompanied by burgeoning numbers of professional, often male, practitioners who are accorded expert status regarding knowledge and skills. The colonisation of rape, child abuse and domestic violenc...

A full and challenging examination of the practice and contextual issues relating to nursing in secure units - whether within special hospitals, the prison service or more general hospitals. Historical and philosophical issues are explored, then more practical aspects are discussed.

Forensic nursing is a relatively recent, and fast developing, specialization within the wider field of psychiatry. The construction of professional practice at the interface of medical and legal services reflects larger ideological shifts in the management of human difference. Central to this trend is the posited relationship between mental disorde...