Professor Trudy Rudge

Professor of Nursing (Social Sciences and Humanities)
RN(NZ) RMHN(NSW), PhD La Trobe BA Adelaide

Trudy Rudge is the Professor of Nursing (Social Sciences and Humanities) in the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Sydney. She is focused on how to bring an understanding of society and the nature of nursing work into curriculum for nursing practice and research. With colleagues at the Faculty she has begun a research group whose sole focus is to bring this interest into nursing research. As the co-director of this group she is currently seeking group status as the Society + Work in Nursing Research Group. Her current research explores the social issues of body shopping in medical tourism, the social impact of waiting in cancer treatment, nursing development in a forensic hospital setting and learning the work of nursing.

Her PhD in nursing researched the interactions between nurses and patients undertaking wound dressings in a burns unit. Her research interests are in the social analysis of nursing, science and technology studies in nursing and histories of nursing and its present. She presents and publishes in a wide variety of settings with colleagues, as well as past and present research students.

Professor Rudge supervises doctoral candidates in the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at Sydney, at Flinders University and at the Lawrence S Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, Toronto. Currently, she coordinates an International PhD Collaboration (INPhD) on behalf of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery. This collaboration links PhD candidates from the University of Sydney with others from Australia, Canada, Europe (Spain and Finland), Mexico and Brazil. She is on the editorial boards of several international nursing and health care journals.

Areas of expertise

Social analysis of nurses’ work contexts; critical discourse analysis and textual analyses of documentation, texts and histories; ethnographic research of patient and nurse experiences of the health care setting (nurse–patient relationships, interactions and ethics of care); science and technology studies in nursing

Current research projects

Body Shopping: gender, ethnicity, place and medical tourism (with Professor Elspeth Probyn, Professor Jocalyn Lawler)

Psychiatric nursing and health care justice: an exploration of role tensions in a traditional correctional setting and a forensic hospital (with post-doctoral visiting fellow, Dr Amelie Perron)

Inpatients/outpatients: the experience of waiting in cancer treatment (with Dr Jackie Cook, University of South Australia, Dr Beverleigh Quested, ARCBS)

Taking the staff out of development: Critical Discourse Analysis of the Texts of Practice Development (with Professor Dave Holmes and Dr Amelie Perron, University of Ottawa)

Recent publications: (2001–2009)

Books and book chapters

Rudge T & Holmes D (Contract signed; Eds) Abjectly Boundless: bodies, boundaries and health work. Edited Collection; Ashgate: UK.

Rudge T (contract signed) Regaining skin: wounds, dressings and the containment of abjection. In Rudge T & Holmes D (under contract) Abjectly Boundless: Bodies, boundaries and health work. Ashgate: UK.

Holmes D & Rudge T (contract signed) Introduction. In Rudge T & Holmes D (under contract) Abjectly Boundless: Bodies, boundaries and health work. Ashgate: UK.

Rudge T (2009) ‘Beyond caring? discounting the differently known body.’ In The Unknown/Known Body, J Latimer & M Schillmeier (eds), London: Sociological Review Monographs Remembering Elites Series, pp235-250.

Rudge T (2004) ‘Community based nursing and home care’ in Lewis Medical-Surgical Nursing: assessment and management of clinical problems, D Brown, H Edwards, S Mantic Lewis, M McLean Heitkemper & S Ruff Dirksen (eds), Elsevier, Marrickville.

Rudge T & Nelson S (2003) ‘Building Capacity? Health Promotional activities empowering the Mentally Ill (1993–1999)’ in In Sickness and in Health S Nelson (ed.), Praxis Publishing, London.

Rudge T (2003) ‘Words are powerful tools: discourse analytic explanations of nursing practice’ in Advances in Qualitative Nursing Research, J Latimer (ed.), Blackwell Science, Oxford.

Rudge T (2002) ‘(Re)writing ethnography: The unsettling questions for nursing research raised by poststructural approaches to "the field"' in Exemplary Research in Nursing and Midwifery, AM Rafferty & M Traynor (eds), Routledge, London.

Journals

Hutton A, Rudge T & Barnes L (2009) ‘The impact of labeling on adolescent care’. Aporia: La revue en sciences infirmières, The Nursing Journal, 1(2): 12-19.

Kako M & Rudge T (2008) ‘Governing nursing: curriculum as a rhetorical vehicle using South Australian nursing schools from the 1950s onwards as an illustrative case’. Contemporary Nurse, 30(2); October: 142-155.

Peters K, Jackson D, & Rudge T (2008) ‘Working with couples: Are feminist approaches useful?’ Journal of Advanced Nursing, 62(3): 373-380.

Peters K, Jackson D & Rudge T (2007) “It just alienated us”: a case study to explore the impact of Assisted Reproductive Technology on family relationships’. Advances in Nursing Science, 30(3): E25-E36.

Turner C, Keyzer D & Rudge T (2007) ‘Spheres of influence or autonomy? A discourse analysis of the introduction of Nurse Practitioners in rural and remote Australia’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 59(1): 38-46.

Peters K, Jackson D & Rudge T (2007) ‘Failures of reproduction: problematising success in assisted reproductive technology’, Nursing Inquiry, 14(2): 125-131.

Toffoli L & Rudge T (2006) ‘Organizational predicaments: ethical conditions for nursing research, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 56(6): 600-606.

Barnes L & Rudge T (2005) ‘Virtual reality or real virtuality: the space of flows and nursing practice’, Nursing Inquiry, 12(4): 306-315.

Peters K, Jackson D & Rudge T (2004) ‘Trigger shot’ administration in Emergency Departments: What are the issues? Australian Emergency Nursing Journal, 7(2): 13-20.

Rudge T & Morse KM (2004) ‘Did anything change? caregivers and schizophrenia after medication changes’, Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 11(1): 3-11.

Barnes L & Rudge T (2003) ‘Co-operation and co-morbidity: managing dual diagnosis in rural South Australia’, Collegian, 10(2): 25-28.

Quested B & Rudge T (2003) ‘Nursing care of dead bodies: a discursive analysis of last offices’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 41(6): 553-560.

Rudge T& Morse KM (2001) ‘Re-awakenings? A discourse analysis of the recovery from schizophrenia after medication change’. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 10: 66-76.

Book reviews

Rudge T (2002) Devices and Desires: Gender, technology and American Nursing, Margarete Sandelowski, 2002, Nursing Inquiry, 9(2): 137-138.

Rudge T (2004) Postmodernism and social research, Mats Alvesson, Buckingham, Open University Press, 2002, Health Sociological Review, 13: 107.

Recent presentations

Scholarly presentations (2001–2009)

Keynotes and invited papers

Discourse Analysis: Analysing text and talk in practice settings. Keynote address at the Research Colloquium, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Western Sydney, April 2004

Words are powerful tools: discursive analyses from clinical research. Paper presented at Faculty of Health Sciences, Massey University, Doctoral Research Week, June 2002

The Moral Spaces of Dual Diagnosis: categories and their dilemmas. Paper presented at Faculty of Health Sciences, Massey University, Doctoral Research Week, June 2002

Defining the Field: field work in the clinical context. Paper presented at School of Nursing, Victoria University, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, October 2002

Analysing the texts of research: textual analysis techniques for field research. Paper presented at School of Nursing, Victoria University, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, October 2002

Health Promotion and citizenship in mental health policies. Paper presented at a seminar held in the School of Nursing, University of Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, October 2002

Creating (dis)order? moral spaces of diagnostic categories. Paper presented at the Centre for Nursing Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, October 2002

Following the “Thing”: defining the field in clinical research. Paper presented at a seminar in the Department of Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, November 2002

Uncovering desire: the secret lives of wound care nurses: Paper presented at doctoral seminar, London University, Whitechapel, November 2002

Bodies in space: spatial practices in wound care procedures in a burns unit. Invitational Conference – 7th Philosophy in the Nurse’s World: Rethinking Mind/Body in Nursing. Banff, Canada, 12–14 May 2001

International conference presentations (2002–2009)

Life after discharge from the transplant unit: there isn’t a next step. Paper presented with B Quested & Mary Ellen Purkis, EBMT 2009 Congress, 29 March–1 April 2009, Göteborg, Sweden

The Shifting Boundaries of Practising Nursing. Paper presented with Professor Jocalyn Lawler at the In Sickness and Health Conference, 15–17 April 2009, Victoria, Vancouver Island BC, Canada

How can the discrimination and stigmatisation of mental health be eroded within the Emergency Department? Paper presented with Jem Masters at the 4th International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 8–11 July 2009, Athens, Greece

Engendering feminist research of a ‘feminised’ profession. Paper presented at the 4th Annual International Ethnography Symposium at School of Management, 23 August–25 August 2009, Liverpool University UK

Nurses’ emotional labour: the shared and personal spheres of palliative and oncology care in Japan and Australia. Paper presented with Miwako Eto at 15th International Conference on Cancer Nursing: Creating partnerships, championing progress and celebrating practice, 17–21 August 2008, Singapore Convention Centre, Singapore

Professing the everyday world of nursing practice: the value of ethnographic study. Paper presented at the 3rd Annual Joint ULMS and Keele University Institute for Public Policy and Management Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences, 3–5 September 2008, Liverpool University

An’Other’ Story of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health: Empowering Nurses to Recognise the Stories, Paper presented with Alice Kemble (BNg Honours candidate), Flinders University and Kerry Taylor, Lecturer, Flinders University at 14th International Critical and Feminist Perspectives in Nursing Conference “Disrupting Inequities In Health and Health Care” 27–30 September 2007, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Beyond Caring? discounting the differently known body Paper presented at Knowing/Unknowing Bodies, An International, Interdisciplinary Colloquium 4–5 September 2007, Cardiff University School of Social Science

Unproblematic access? Troubling the notion of ‘ease of access’ in field research in the clinical area. Round table, presented with Dr Alison Hutton, Beverleigh Quested, Allison Roderick and Luisa Toffoli at the Seventh International Qualitative Health Research Conference, 13–16 July 2006, Gold Coast, QLD

Governing nurses from afar: are we regulating conduct or practice? Regulation and Globalisation, ICN 7th International Regulation Conference, 20–21 May 2005, Taipai, Taiwan

History of midwives in Hiroshima at 1899 to 1910, 27th Congress of the International Confederations of Midwives: Midwifery; pathways to health nations, 24–28 July 2005, Brisbane

The first time fathers’ experience of premature infants in the early neonatal period, Poster presentation, The World congress of Perinatal Medicine, 13–16 September 2005, Osaka, Japan

The Cut-and-Come-Again culture of children’s eating: Coca-Cola Amatil and the re-structure of South Australian Primary School Tuck-shops. Paper presented at the Cultural Studies Association of Australia Conference, ‘Everyday Transformations: The 21st Century Quotidian’ with Dr Jackie Cook (University of South Australia), 9–11 December, 2004, Fremantle, WA

‘Mind/medication/body: the politics of medicating schizophrenia’, Paper presented at Vital Politics, Department of Sociology, 5–7 September 2003, London School of Economics and Political Science

Categorisation: a ‘final’ solution? Demoralization: the moral dilemmas of individualization in contemporary society. With Dr Lynne Barnes, University of South Australia), April 2002, Cardiff University, UK

Building capacity? Health promotional activities empowering the mentally ill. (1993–2001). With Dr Sioban Nelson, University of Melbourne. In Sickness and in Health: ethics, populations and health. July 2002, University of Melbourne

Awards and grants: 2008–2002

2008 Principal investigator in a WUN seeding grant (with Professor Elspeth Probyn and Professor Jocalyn Lawler) Body shopping: gender, ethnicity, place and medical tourism. $40,000 (matched funding from University of Sydney)

2007 Vice Chancellor’s Innovations in Teaching Award, Teaching the Social as Primary Health Care Research through a mentorship program to final year undergraduate nursing students (with Dr Julie Henderson and Dr Alison Hutton). $10,000

2006 Principal investigator in a Flinders University Teaching and Learning Grant (with Dr Alison Hutton & Dr Julie Henderson): Nursing Students undertaking social research in a primary health care environment. $9700

2007 Project Leader in the application an Infrastructure Seeding Grant for developing a collaboration with the True Life Creations to develop an e-learning tool of nursing students with Dr Alison Hutton (School of Nursing and Midwifery). $10,000

2005 Emotional Labour in Palliative and Cancer Care Nursing: a cross cultural analysis. (with Professor Toyoda and Miwako Meto, School of Human Nursing, The University of Shiga Prefecture, Hikone-shi Shiga, 522-8533, Japan) Grant received from Ministry of Health, Japan

2004 Principal investigator in a Flinders Institute of Health and Medical Research Grant-in-Aid (with Dr J Cook, Dr D Ferretti & B Quested). Impatience/Outpatients: the politics of waiting in cancer treatment. $9400

2002 Investigator in an Australian Technology Network (ATN) Small Grant (with Dr Lynne Barnes and Marie Heartfield: University of South Australia). Mental Illness and Substance Abuse Disorder: is “Dual Diagnosis” a useful term and if so, useful for whom? $7000

Areas of teaching and research supervision

Current research students

Margaret Hall, PhD candidate, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney, Thesis entitled: Back to the future: a history of the present in nursing.

Monica McEvoy, PhD candidate, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney, Thesis entitled: The experience of hospitalization with first episode psychosis: a phenomenological study

Marilyn Orrock, PhD candidate, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney, Thesis entitled Role and Value Conflict in Senior Nurse Managers

Luisa Toffoli, PhD candidate, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney, Thesis entitled: ‘Nursing hours’ or ‘nursing’ hours? – a discourse analysis

External supervisions

Sarah Flogen, Lawrence S Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, thesis entitled ‘Does the Ontario Stroke System deliver what it intends? An institutional ethnography exploring the social organization of stroke survivors’

Clare Harvey, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, thesis entitled ‘The Politics of Advancing Nursing: a critical discourse analysis’

Alison Roderick School of Nursing and Midwifery, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, thesis entitled ‘An ethnographic study of nurses’ infection control practices in an intensive care unit’

Completed research students

Doctor of Philosophy

(Under examination), 2009 Attard, Melanie, Carriers of Responsibility: An existential encounter with parents who know that their child is, or could be, a carrier of a mutation in the cystic fibrosis gene. Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney, Sydney

(Under examination), 2009 Ohara, Ryoko, An Oral History of Nurses who Cared for the Atomic Bomb Victims in Hiroshima from August 1945 to the End of that Year. Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney, Sydney (Principal supervisor)

2009 Breaden, Katrina M. Living with Advanced Disease: a discourse analysis of young women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. Department of Palliative and Supportive Services, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide. (Co-supervisor)

2008 Quested, Beverleigh. Some Days are Diamonds: facets of blood stem cell transplantation. School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide. (Principal supervisor)

2008 Allport-Haller, Amanda. Surrogate Endings: Narrative representations of parents’ experience of their child’s acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) relapse. School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide. (Principal supervisor)

2008 Kako, Mayumi, Uncertainty to certainty? a discourse analysis of professionalisation of nursing from the 1950s in South Australia. School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide. (Principal supervisor)

2006 Hutton, Alison, Your space or mine? The construction of social space in an adolescent ward. School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide. (Principal supervisor)

2006 Peters, Kathleen, Misguided Hope: A narrative analysis of couples’ stories of childlessness despite treatment with Assisted Reproductive Technology. School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide. (Principal supervisor)

2002 Heartfield, Marie, Governing Recovery: Hospital Length of Stay & Episodes of Acute Care. School of Postgraduate Nursing, University of Melbourne. (Co-supervisor)

Master of Nursing (Research)

2009 Masters, Jem, MN (Honours) candidate, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney, Thesis entitled: A proposed study of emergency department nurses’ attitudes and belief systems – in relation to mental health patients using a symbolic interactionist approach

2001 Selim, Pam, Unravelling wound management practice in the community: a flexible approach. (Co-supervisor)

1999 Hutton, Alison, Drawing out the adolescent perspective on the design of an adolescent ward. (Co-supervisor)

Areas of teaching

Sociology of health and illness, history of the present in nursing, social analysis of nursing practices and their implications for the discipline of nursing, the nurse-patient relationship, critical policy analysis, qualitative health research, field research methods in nursing and health care.

Examination of thesis

Doctor of Philosophy

2007 The gendering of suicide, School of Communication, Journalism and Public Relations, Division of Education and Social Sciences, University of South Australia (winner of the inaugural Ian Davey Prize of best PhD thesis examined at the University of South Australia; 2007)

2007 The New Zealand nurse practitioner polemic: a discourse analysis. School of Nursing, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

2006 Delirium in the older adult: a critical gerontological approach. School of Nursing, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

2004 The Discursive Constitution of Change in Clinical Nursing Practice. School of Nursing, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

2002 The elderly primigravida: contest and complexity – A Foucauldian analysis of maternal age in relation to pregnancy and birth. School of Nursing, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Editorial board membership

Aporia: la revue en science infirmières; a nursing journal: University of Ottawa

Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine: Sage Publishers

Nursing Inquiry: Blackwell Publishers

Adjunct positions

Adjunct Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

Professor, Status Only, Lawrence S Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

International Collaborations

Coordinator (2008–09) The International PhD Collaboration (Consortium with Schools and Faculties of Nursing at University of Toronto; University of Melbourne; University of Säo Paulo; Universitat de les Illes Balears, España; University of Turku, Finland; Universidad Autonóma de Nuevo León, México).

Teaching in INPhD (international PHD collaboration)

International Perspectives on Knowledge Production in Nursing and Health (2008); Building the Scholarship in Nursing (Summer School, 2007)

Visiting Scholar

2004

Visiting Scholar, Research Colloquium, University of Western Sydney, April 2004

2003

Visiting Scholar, Research Colloquium, University of South Australia, December 2003

2002

Visiting Scholar, Centre for Research Policy in Nursing, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, November 2002

Visiting Scholar, School of Nursing, Victoria University, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, October 2002

Visiting Scholar, Massey University, School of Health Sciences, Research Week, June 2002

Conference organisation

Member, Conference Organising Committee for In Sickness and in Health: ethics, populations and health. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, July, 2002 (with Dr Sioban Nelson, University of Melbourne)

Member, Conference Organising Committee and Abstract Review Committee for In Sickness and in Health: ethics, populations and health. University of Victoria, Vancouver Island, April 2009