I learnt everything I know from conversations in the nursing office!

This is auto-performance ethnographic research which explores the psychiatric context of adolescent units in the UK. It tells a story of a Staff Nurse (Wendy) who with the help of her two colleagues (Guy & Everret) attempt to work out some of the symbolic roles associated with the representation of nursing. The realisation that autonomy, freedom and essentialism (key Humanist foundations and drivers of modern nursing philosophy) are little more than myth and at best simply shackles of the Nursing Franchise™.

The indignation and symbolism of the secret franchise interweaves with pragmatic issues of defining what nursing actually is and how this translates as reproduction, representation and consumption in the love lives of Wendy and her crew. The main thesis is under pinned by the constructionist idea that nurses represent a culture performing them. As the advertising blurb states: The Nursing Franchise is little more than a conversation. A quirky post-structural analysis of nursing ontological subjectivity. Wendy, an object of personhood, representation, reproduction and healthcare tribes.

This is an unusual book based on over 6 years of auto-ethnographic research by the author. As such it should be of interest to anthropological type researchers as it offers a unique insight into the struggles of collecting cultural data and structurally ordering it into semiotic frames and sites of analysis. As the above strap line suggests, this performance ethnography points up that nurses don’t communicate using language, but rather, language uses them usually in the form of representative confirming conversations in the nursing office.

Although a standalone book Wendy and the Mysterious Nursing Franchise is the third of a trilogy exploring the significance of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the UK (both Episode I: Therapy Factories and Episode II: The Counselling Industry are available electronically). They offer an insight for anyone participating or intending to clinically experience this specialised arena of health and social care. In addition, the descriptions and research dilemmas give an insight for researchers, students of cultural studies, mental health and psychology.