'You don't tick boxes on a form': A study of how community mental health nurses assess and manage risk.
Health, Risk & Society, 6 (4):
347 - 360 (2004)Abstract
Since the early 1990s, a new modality of community mental health care, strongly focussed on the control of risk, has taken shape in Britain. It is argued in this paper that this new regime of community mental health care is highly rational and indicative of what Castel (1991) termed the 'epidemiological clinic'. The study discussed in this paper aimed to develop a greater understanding of how community mental health nurses, who have become frontline operatives of the new regime of community mental health care, reflect on and practise risk assessment and risk management. Interviews with 20 community mental health nurses from various geographical and practice areas demonstrated that risk assessment and risk management formed an integral part of their work. Some considered standardised methods of risk assessment to be too reductive, stifling and unnecessary, whilst others found them useful and informative. 'Professional intuition' was valued by many as an alternative method of risk asses