The discursive construction of the role of the nurse in medication administration: an exploration of the literature

This paper draws on postmodern thought to interrogate the literature relating to nurses and medications. An examination of the representation of a specific nursing activity in the literature-the administration of medications-reveals much about the way in which the role of the nurse is discursively constructed. This is particularly evident from an analysis of the procedures shaping that role. These procedures, which nurses themselves develop and institute as rules to guide nursing practice, can have the effect of reducing nursing work to a series of rituals which contribute to the discursive construction of the nurse's role in medication administration.