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In recent decades scholars have begun to question the value of mental health nursing. The term has lost both conceptual and explanatory power in the modern globalized world in which multidisciplinary teams now carry out many functions once unique to the specialization, yet its distinction persists. The purpose of this paper is to explore an emerging research methodology, duoethnography, as an avenue to revive mental health nursing, by subverting the dominant post-positivist, scientifically driven, medically framed, evidence-based practice perspective, to gain greater understanding of the nuances of mental health nursing practice. Duoethnography offers promise in challenging nursing research norms embedded in an empirically based medical model, however the newness of the method poses potential methodological issues. Duoethnography is a methodology well-suited to explore the question of whether mental health nursing is an outmoded tradition too deeply entrenched in the institutional past, or an emerging profession leading mental health care.

While there is a growing body of research available on general restraint intervention in acute adult psychiatric settings, relatively little is known about nurses' experiences of administering chemical restraint. The research question explored in this study was: what are mental health nurses' experiences of using chemical restraint interventions in times of behavioural emergency on adult inpatient acute mental health units? Through this Canadian study understanding of direct care nurses' first-hand experiences of the use of chemical restraint interventions was sought. Eight adult acute inpatient mental health nurses were interviewed using hermeneutic phenomenological method. Two major themes that emerged from data analysis are explored to illuminate the existing tension between therapeutic, person-centred care and coercive control to maintain safety: taking control to maintain safety and working within constraints. Integral ways that nurses make meaning from administering chemical restraint were found, as well as some of the complex clinical and ethical decision-making aspects involved in psychiatric nursing care. Implications for practice, education, and policy are discussed. Research findings indicated a need for further focus on medication best practice, policy development and nurse education. These exploratory research findings can be used to both inform and challenge dominant inpatient mental health practice to guide nurses, health care leaders, and policy makers by increased understanding of the complex ethical decision making required for use of chemical restraint interventions.

Racism in healthcare is real and it impacts nurses in ways that permeate the culture of healthcare. In the context of increasing social discourse about racism in healthcare, a group of nurses in British Columbia, Canada, felt a moral obligation to expose the social injustice of the systemic racism they had witnessed or experienced. They used film, an arts-based medium, as an innovative tool with the potential to reach an array of viewers, for this nurse activist project in anti-racist action. The creative process allowed for a racially diverse group of nurses to engage in meaningful dialogue about racism in healthcare. The purpose of this descriptive methodological article is to describe how a creative team of novice nurse filmmakers used the nursing process as a framework to carry this project from concept to execution. The stages described include the rationale for developing the film, the process of utilizing this as a means of nurse activism, and the value of using film as a strategy for social activism. Film was used to engage nurses and nursing students in anti-racist work that critically challenges the structural racism embedded in healthcare. We request that all readers view our film in conjunction with reading this article to best grasp how this article and the film complement one another because the film and article are intended to co-exist and not to exist in isolation from one another.