Prison Nursing: The Knowledge/Power Connection

Prisons are institutions where power and control are complex issues which have a significant affect on nursing. This paper focuses on the development of a framework to illuminate an understanding of the way in which power, discourse and knowledge connect within the prison setting, and thus impact on both the emotional labour and professional practice of the prison nurse. Central to developing this framework is reference to a study which explored the emotional labour of prison nurses. In affecting the complex knowledge/power relationships within the prison health care setting, regular high quality clinical supervision is suggested as one way in which prison nurses can be supported in challenging the regimes of truth that underpin the dominant discourses affecting their practice, and hence their levels of emotional labour.