I spy with my little eye something beginning with O: looking at what the myth of 'doing the observations' means in mental health nursing culture.

Those who are familiar with psychiatric inpatient settings will be aware of the expressions 'doing the obs', 'being on checks' and 'special observations'. That is because the task of observing patients is seen as being pivotal to the mental health nursing role. This paper describes an ethnographic research project that offers a rethinking of psychiatric observation. The author uses data from an ethnographic research project to provide an examination of the structure, process and outcome of this seemingly straightforward nursing task and explores how 'doing the obs' has additional symbolic and cultural meaning similar to what Barthes terms myth. The symbolic connotations are numerous and wide-ranging and expose a practice that could be said to punctuate daily activities and an ordering of relationships between nurses and services users. The classic sociological issues of status, power and containment are all relevant, yet rethought. The use of ethnographic research allowed the author to focus on the more symbolic cultural dynamics and develop five initial ethnographic themes concerning the constituting experience of watching and being watched.