Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 17, 2026

Using Learning Outcome Measures to assess Doctoral Nursing Education
Published on: June 21, 2010
Doing Foucault: inquiring into nursing knowledge with Foucauldian discourse analysis
Rusla Anne Springer1, Michael E Clinton
1College of Nursing, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Abstract:
Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) is a methodology that is well suited to inquiring into nursing knowledge and its organization. It is a critical analytic approach derived from Foucault's histories of science, madness, medicine, incarceration and sexuality, all of which serve to exteriorize or make visible the 'positive unconscious of knowledge' penetrating bodies and minds. Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA) holds the potential to reveal who we are today as nurses and as a profession of nursing by facilitating our ability to identify and trace the effects of the discourses that determine the conditions of possibility for nursing practice that are continuously shaping and (re)shaping the knowledge of nursing and the profession of nursing as we know it. In making visible the chain of knowledge that orders the spaces nurses occupy, no less than their subjectivities, FDA is a powerful methodology for inquiring into nursing knowledge based on its provocation of deep critical reflection on the normalizing power of discourse.
Related Concept Videos
Theoretical Foundations of Nursing Practice
Theories provide a perspective to assess patients' conditions and organize data and methods. They also assist in analyzing and interpreting information. They represent a...
Patient-centered Care
Nursing Ethical Principles II
Consider the following scenario, which illustrates how these principles are applied in the care of Mr. John, a fifty-year-old teacher diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer.
Initially, Mr. John's...
Sources of Law
Constitutional law is foundational, deriving from federal and state constitutions, and...
Nursing Ethical Principles I
Autonomy
Autonomy underscores the significance of a patient's self-determination and freedom from external control. In healthcare, respecting...
Critical Thinking I

