Abstract: This paper uses the findings of two studies to explore the nature of nurses' practice when working with vulnerable and marginalised populations, particularly with regard to the attributes of holism and individualised care. The first study was with the elderly with delirium and used a critical gerontological methodology informed by postmodernism and Foucault's understanding of discourse. The other study with indigenous Maori women utilised Glaserian grounded theory informed by a Maori-centred methodology. The findings show that a problem focussed approach to health care is offered to patients that does not incorporate individual health experiences. In addition, the social context integral to people's lives outside of the health care environment is ignored. Consequently, the foundations of nursing practice, that of holism, is found to be merely a rhetorical construct.

Abstract: This qualitative thesis uses discourse analysis to examine parental resistance towards medical treatment of critically ill children. It is an investigation of the 'mobile and transitory' discourses at play in instances of resistance between parents, physicians and nurses within health care institutions, and an examination of the consequences of resistance through providing alternative ways of perceiving and therefore understanding these disagreements. The philosophical perspectives, methodology and methods used in this thesis are underpinned by selected ideas taken from the works of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu and supported by relevant literature in the fields of media, law, children, parenting, caring, serious childhood illness, medicine and nursing. It is argued that from an examination of interview based texts, parental resistance is an omnipresent but transitory occurrence that affects many of the interactions between the parents of seriously ill children and clinical staff. It is maintained that within these interactions, the seeds of this resistance are sown in both critical decision making situations and in everyday occurrences between doctors, nurses and parents within healthcare institutions. Contributing factors to parental resistance include the use of power games by staff, the language of medicine, forms of symbolic violence, the presence or absence of trust between parents and medical staff, the effects of medical habitus, and challenges to the parental role and identity. Overall, it is proposed in this thesis that parents who resist treatment for their seriously ill child are not exceptions to the normative patient-physician relationship.