Living my narrative: storying dishonesty and deception in mental health nursing

AbstractThis article proceeds from MacIntyre's moral philosophical perspective of individual human lives constituting unified narratives, in the context of co‐evolving framing and guiding master narratives. This perspective accords specific episodes in people's lives the status of significant component parts of their developing, storied and enacted individual histories. From this philosophical base, autoethnographic principles will be employed in providing accounts from my own professional life narrative strand as a mental health nurse educator that speak to the issue of institutionalized dishonesty and deception in mental health nursing education and practice. On the basis of my pre‐existing experience of publishing in nursing journals and scholarly identity, my argument will proceed from contesting the idea of an imagined stable foundational professional ethos underpinning mental health nursing practice, against which to judge professional dishonesty and deception. Using illustrative, relatively recent short stories, drawn from my lived‐experience base as a mental health nurse educator, I will argue throughout at implicit and explicit levels that dishonesty and deception are alwa