The Big Nurse Analysis

This quote shows how Nurse Ratched is reminding the patients that they all have a mental illness and they are not “normal” people. A lot of the patients begin to question the ruling of Nurse Ratched. When they speak up about how they feel, she implies that they are rules for therapeutic reasons. She wants them to follow the orders and not question her command in the ward. The nurse makes the patients feel worthless and hopeless, which is a

The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is about the power structure of a mental ward from the perspective of a patient, Bromden. The story takes place during the 1950's in Oregon. Many of the patients on the ward are not necessarily insane however do not fit in with pre established societal norms and have chosen a life away from these norms. The men who are voluntary have given in to the staff and follow them like sheep, however, the men who are committed need controlling according to society so they were sent to the ward. The head nurse, Nurse Rached, of the ward keeps control using her staff that has been picked out over years of meticulous selection. The staff under Rached's orders keep control of the patients

Second in a discussion of power are the women associated with the patients. The supervisor at the hospital is associated with the patients by controlling who is employed to take care of the patients. Nurse Ratched and the supervisor served in the Army together as nurses. They are still very close and have a good relationship. Because of this relationship, Nurse Ratched’s employment is secured and others won’t stand up to her for fear of losing their own jobs. Harding states “In this hospital, the doctor doesn’t hold the power of hiring and firing. That power goes to the supervisor and the supervisor is a woman, a dear old friend of Miss Ratched’s” (61). The receptionist on the ward is Nurse Ratched’s neighbor

Nurse Ratched is a former army nurse who works in the ward, she has manipulates the men in many ways. One way is having the patients “spy on each other” making them write things down, they think she would want to hear, or know. Bromden described Nurse Ratched as having the ability to “set the wall clock to whatever speed she wants”, a metaphor for her control, showing how the patients lose track of

Nurse Ratched (also known as Big Nurse) was used to being forceful to get what she wanted. She stopped at no end to have complete oversight over the men in the ward. When the men were in the nurse’s presence they were either saying what they knew she wanted to hear or cleaning something that she ordered them to clean. They knew not to speak out against her and to not say something that would make you stand out too much. Ratched’s tactics to get them to be fit for society were normally some kind of procedure on the man

Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.

There are many situations in which Nurse Ratched exhibits control over her patients, by treating them as subordinates, humiliating them and de-masculinizing them without concern for their well-being. She uses control to withhold simple privileges, such as being able to watch a baseball game on the television, tub privileges and their right to have possession of cigarettes. It seems she actually derives satisfaction from this through hints of smiles, which are so seldom seen. This only brings about anger and hostility in the patients because of the way she treats them: like children instead of men. This is put best when one patient, Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) says, “Rules? Piss on your fucking rules, Miss Ratched! ... I ain’t no little kid! When you’re gonna have cigarettes kept from me like

faculty in order to gain power and take away all of their freedoms, even their freedom

Regarding Miss Ratched, she seems to show signs of passive-aggressive behavior throughout the book. This behavior adds to her manipulative ways and contributed to the decrease of the patients’ progress (mental/physical state). Passive-aggressive behavior is used to maintain control and power because it’s a way for her to not display any signs of weakness. Miss Ratched, also known as the Big Nurse to the patients, fights hard to remain as the top authority figure in the Ward due to her thirst for power. To maintain the control over the men, she emasculates them, stripping them of their masculinity, in various ways to prevent the chance of an uproar against her. For instance, after a group meeting regarding Harding’s problem with his wife’s breasts, the patients attack Harding. In response, McMurphy provides an analogy of a pecking party to the current

He becomes a father-like figure to the inmates, and the inmates begin to rely on him for their needs. As McMurphy continues to defy Nurse Ratched and her rules by creating a basketball team, gambling even more, and annoying Nurse Ratched, the inmates begin to see his actions as divine. This proves he resembles Jesus Christ. He brings goodness into the ward to confront the evil set by the hospital. George Boyd describes McMurphy’s purpose when he says, “he brings the promise of spiritual renewal to his disciples” (126). McMurphy clearly shows this when he repairs Chief Bromden and convinces him to speak again. The Chief stops talking and acts deaf because he fears the society and its rules. McMurphy gives him a new life and strength to overcome his fear and to challenge the rules of the ward and Nurse Ratched. Another noteworthy example of spiritual renewal occurs when McMurphy takes twelve inmates on a fishing trip. He creates a sense of freedom and strength within the inmates by the trip. The resemblance to the twelve disciples of Christ is no coincidence. Just as Christ, McMurphy gives his disciples a new life to live and a bright outlook for the future. The inmates grow stronger and lose their weaknesses they are still afraid to take the initiative and challenge Nurse Ratched and look to McMurphy to solve their problems. The achievement of McMurphy’s rise to

Nurse Ratched’s pretense was the hardest one to identify. We see her as the head nurse in the institution and controls every worker and patient in it. Her desire is that things go her way and only her way and has complete power, and runs the institute more of a dictatorship. We all see Nurses universally as good people that help others in need. But I think that Nurse Ratched did more bad than

A discussion regarding the health care reform or even health care in general can be somewhat controversial. The definition of health is drastically different depending on whom you speak to. Many would define health as " a person's absence of disease, others would describe good health based on the status of mind, body & social well-being" (GCU Lecture, module 2, 2012). According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, health is defined as "The overall condition of an organism at a given time". An individual's overall health affects the nation, this is where stakeholders come into value. According to Keele, Buckner & Bushnell a stakeholder is either an individual or an organization that either invest time and

The purpose of this assignment is to critically appraise a selected research paper following a data extraction relevant to the field of nursing. Critical appraisal is the process of evaluating the strengths and weakness of research, to find out if it is valid, reliable and applicable (Moule and Goodman, 2009). The following article to be critiqued is “A Nutritional Formula Enriched with Arginine, Zinc, and Antioxidants for the Healing of Pressure Ulcers” by Cereda et al. (2015).

It would be interesting to note if there were more studies that show correlation between nurses that encourage and have positive attitudes and more compliance from the patient.

Chief Bromden on the other hand, has characteristics that are opposite to those of The Big nurse. He is always taking orders, both from the Big Nurse and also from his fellow patients in the institute. One incident that this happened is when the Black boys in white suits called him up in the morning after spotting him and ordered him to mop the floor “Stick a mop in my hand and motion to the spot they aim for me to clean today, and I go. One swats the backs of my legs with a broom handle to hurry me past.” (Kessey, 1962), as they just stood behind him gossiping and hating everything.