S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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enrolment, mobilisation), remote nurses assume the role of the obligatory passage point of a created network. Second, there exists a disparity between remote nurses’ self-perceptions of the quality of the mental healthcare they provide, and the perceptions of other actors in the social world of the same. Remote nurses self-report low levels of confidence, role competency and knowledge when delivering mental healthcare. Conversely, other actors in the social world have a high opinion of the skills, quality and mental health outcomes delivered by nurses working in remote Australian locations. Third, remote nurses have unique characteristics, individually and as a collective (group). It is challenging to remain in remote environments and deliver mental healthcare. The social world is usually chaotic, disorganised, contains absences (Clarke, 2005), and can be messy, unsafe, risky and hazardous. Yet remote nurses remain tenaciously and stoically present and functional in delivering mental healthcare. They do so because they collectively possess enabling characteristics for this work: resourcefulness, resilience, responsiveness and robustness. This chapter references the contemporary literature in discussing these three key findings. No study has been published to date examining Australian remote general nurses delivering mental healthcare. Some publications have examined and reported certain aspects of this type of care, predominately concerning rural, but also remote nurses delivering mental healthcare. Other studies have reported on wider issues involving remote nurses, which nevertheless are relevant to the case study: for example, nurses’ attitudes in the rural setting (Reed & Fitzgerald, 2005), the stresses undergone by remote area nurses (Lenthall et al., 2009) and workforce issues for rural and remote areas (Hegney et al.,

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