S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

251

In the wet season the roads are closed so the only way in and out is by air, and then you have to have safe enough weather to fly. [T29, p. 2] Hence the delivery of mental healthcare by remote nurses can be responsive to the weather conditions, which determines a community’s degree of isolation. The last group in the non-human arena is resources (physical, abstract objects and social). The physical resources in the arena relate to the resources which are available to remote nurses to deliver the care such as cars, planes, medication. This study found there were two foci by participants. The first related to whether healthcare was delivered utilising a primary healthcare centre or a hospital. The former meant nurses could not admit mental patients and the later they could. Hence the nature of the infrastructure dramatically shaped the manner of caring for the mental health patient. As one nurse participant stated when managing a suicidal patient in the middle of the night: You’ve got no hospital to admit them to. The only help you’ve got is a psychiatrist or mental health team thousands of kilometres away on the end of a line. [T1, p. 13] In comparison, another remote nurse who worked in a community with an acute hospital of ten bed capacity stated: [We are] fully or a well-resourced and supported environment to care for the clients. [T2, p. 7] The second physical resource is the availability video conferencing facilities due to the increasing reliance on this technology. This has been discussed earlier in the chapter, and hence is not canvassed in this section. Again, the physical resource influences and shapes the manner of the remote nurse delivering mental healthcare. For example, with video conferencing facilities, assessments and interviews can be undertaken in ‘real time’,