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Film, a powerful publicising agent of knowledge, can have detrimental ideological and material implications contributing towards the systematic exclusion of disabled people. The paper explores how acquired physical disability is constructed within three contemporary mainstream fiction films. Guided by theoretical disability models and stereotypic representations of disability, identified by seminal authors in the field, the discussion highlights discourses that are perpetuated, challenged, or omitted within cinematic portrayals of disability. The paper also addresses how these discourses contribute to the maintenance or subversion of ableist power. The data underwent a multimodal analysis guided by critical and cinematic discourses. While steps towards more nuanced and diverse representations of acquired physical disability are evident, the films continue to perpetuate hegemonic discourses, emotionally provocative, and caricatured portrayals of disability. Arguably, contemporary disability fiction films are still largely produced for, and consumed by, abled audiences. Recommendations for transforming cinematic representations of the disabled are addressed. Films can communicate accurate knowledge as well as damaging stereotypes to the public. Disability has often been portrayed negatively in films and thus it is important to critically analyse films about disability. The paper discusses three contemporary films in which the main actors have an acquired physical disability. What is said about disability through the films' dialogue, and how disability is shown through camera angles, music, and props was analysed. The research found that films about acquired physical disability continue to produce negative stereotypes about disability. Thus, discrimination against disabled people is continued. Encouragingly, some stereotypes about disability were seen to be challenged in the contemporary films. Future films need to be more inclusive of disability. Characters need to be complex, all-rounded individuals, with disability being only one facet of their personhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encountering disability can produce an experience of the uncanny in non-disabled people. 'Uncanny' refers to a psychological experience which is frightening, arousing a sense of uncertainty, dread, and horror; yet the observer is also left with a sense of familiarity. This article explores the phenomenon of the uncanny for mothers of children who are visibly physically disabled. It is argued that the gaze of others provokes a particular maternal response. Mothers see their own children through the eyes of the other, others who experience a disabled child as unfamiliar. Accordingly, maternal ambivalence is amplified. Maternal attempts to manage these various feelings and complex experiences so as to maintain love for their children are explored. The mothers' continuing process of psychic development vacillates between integration and unraveling, as they sit on the boundary of their own sense of the uncanny. The article includes a discussion of how the women used the disabled author, at times also perceived as uncanny by the mothers, in an attempt to cope with their discomfort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research centring South African black lesbian women's identities has increased significantly in recent years. However, a politics of visibility (in academic and public spaces) has not secured equal status and human rights for many of these women. Instead, dominant discourses of blackwashing homophobia (re)produce colonial strategies of othering, associating their identities with violence, fear, shame and victimhood. Black lesbian women are often constructed as inevitable targets of special crimes – particularly that of 'corrective rape' in township settings (in the case of South Africa). This repeated, negative stereotype conceals the effects of historical and contemporary inequalities that constrain the constitutional protection and social sanctioning of black, queer identities. An increasingly relevant, but under-examined area of study is the potential for collective political action to disrupt reductionist discourses, recognising these women's identities as whole, plural, fluid, complex and contradictory. This article thus focalises one exemplar of such resistance, using a feminist, intersectional methodological framework to explore secondary, textual data. The findings contribute to a growing body of research that foregrounds intersectionality theory as a valuable lens through which contemporary South African identities can be viewed. Counter-discourses that challenge blackwashing strategies are also offered. The findings allude specifically to the significance of black lesbian women's community-level mobilisation against gender-based violence, and its intersections with racial and sexual inequalities. Where blackwashing discourses tend to essentialise and divide these identities into parts, findings suggest that for some black lesbian women, racial, gendered and sexual identities are indivisible: connected particularly to joy, solidarity, pleasure, power, resilience and strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper draws on a 2015 study in New Zealand that examined perceptions of registered nurses (RNs) and general practitioners (GPs) regarding the role of Nurse Practitioners (NPs) in long-term aged care facilities (LTACF). Aim: To explore the attitudes of RNs and GPs regarding the role of NPs in LTACFs. Design: A descriptive, mixed methods design with a survey and invitation to interview was used. RNs and GPs who provided hospital-level care were invited to participate. Findings: The findings showed RNs and GPs are open to considering the NP role in aged care. However, there remains a lack of understanding of what NPs do. Conclusions: This study suggests a shift in attitude towards accepting the NP role by RNs and GP working in LTACFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This focus offers a psychoanalytical understanding of the maternal subjectivities of mothers of children with a disability. The deficit assumptions and apparent splits in the existing literature on disability in general, and on mothers’ experiences of raising a disabled child, will be discussed. Specificities of this maternal subjectivity include mothers’ engagement in unconscious defence mechanisms, including part-object relating (splitting), minimisation, denial, as well as engaging in compensatory and reparative impulses in order to manage the intense emotions of this mothering experience. Mothers of disabled children are forced to confront and tolerate their own preconceived notions and uncomfortable feelings of disability that they have introjected from society's deficit view of disability. Once women have a baby that belongs to the ‘outgroup’ of society, they have to tolerate society's projections of the disavowed aspects of disability. Mothers are left with intense feelings of shame and guilt. They also experience loss for their fantasised ideal object, the non-disabled baby. This is a vastly under-researched area and it is apparent that there is a need for further engagement with the maternal subjectivities of mothers with children with a disability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Traditionally disability has been viewed in the popular imagination as either a highly positive or highly negative phenomenon. Disability and disabled people deserve to be seen in an integrated, holistic way and to have recognised as much diversity as characterises the human condition. The recent case of Oscar Pistorius fatally shooting Reeva Steenkamp has highlighted this tendency. Before this incident, Pistorius’ disability was viewed in a predominantly positive light. He had been described as a ‘supercrip’ who had, despite his physical impairments, ‘overcome’ his mobility limitations and was consequently attributed heroic status by some. However, after this fatal incident, the portrayal of Pistorius’ disability has, perhaps inevitably, shifted. This paper will offer possible psychosocial reasons for this tendency to view disability in a binary way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nurse practitioners were introduced into Australia in 1990 to improve access to health care in isolated communities where medical doctors are scarce. The slow uptake of nurse practitioners in these areas has largely been the result of legislation not affording them access to provider numbers through the Medicare Australia Act 1973. This has denied nurse practitioners the opportunity to become primary care providers because they cannot prescribe medications and order diagnostic tests at rebated costs. Recently this Act changed, making provision for nurse practitioners. Ironically the enactment of the new legislation still prevents nurse practitioners from practicing effectively. This paper describes the discursive practices in legislation, driven by traditional power brokers, which perpetuate the traditional role of nurses as care givers and fails to support the evolution of nurse practitioners as care providers. These continued practices effectively prevent nurse practitioners from working to their potential, despite government reassurance under recent health care reform in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]