We Refuse to Cope! The Vitruvian Nurse, the Code of Conduct, and Nurses’ Lived Knowledge

Abstract

We, as nurses, refuse to cope. In this editorial style piece we discuss the ongoing crisis in nursing and the ways in which this situation is being produced. We discuss the metaphors with which nursing is produced in the UK and US and how these metaphors produce an idealized version of nurses and nursing that is impossible. We situate this metaphor in critical posthuman theory by drawing comparisons to Braidotti’s (2013) understanding of the idealised human as an axiom of social production under advanced capitalist societies. We make comparisons of this idealized person with the idealized nurses that are captured in nursing codes of conduct and practice. We then suggest ways in which we can resist and diffract metaphors in nursing to produce affirmative futures.