S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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instance people and texts are processes of transformation, compromise or negotiation’ (Callon & Law, 1997, p. 171). Thus the remote nurse group’s relationships mould their variable geometry of influence or concern, which directs their actions. If the remote nurses in a community who are managing a mental health crisis presentation do not have access to a psychiatrist for advice, their influence over the situation and consequent actions in delivering mental healthcare, will be different to remote nurses who do have such access. In the former, the remote nurses are only networked with each other within their group, including local resources (the mental health presentation will have to be ‘managed locally’), while in the latter situation the group of remote nurses has morphed by networking with another group namely psychiatrist(s) and psychiatric advice(s). The group of remote nurses is no longer a discrete group of remote nurses, but is now a new group consisting of remote nurses and psychiatrists. This will remain so for as long as there is a necessity for that newly formed network to retain its present format. If it were determined that the mental health patient required aero-medical evacuation, then a third group would enter the network and thereby create a newly formed network: remote nurses, psychiatrists and Royal Flying Doctor Service (and all the associated non-human actors, e.g., planes, aviation fuel, radar, airports etc.). In the above scenario, the researcher deliberately absented from the discussion a critical group namely the mental health patient(s). They are central to the forming of any network in the remote nurse’s social world of delivering mental healthcare (see Chapter 6). Obviously if nobody in the remote community has a mental illness, then a social world of remote nurses delivering mental healthcare would not exist. But if they are a group, within

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