The private psychiatric hospital scandal: a critical social approach.

The recent events that transpired in the for-profit psychiatric hospital industry in which hospitals were alleged to engage in practices which ranged from unethical to illegal underscore the importance of examining the contexts of nursing practice. A wide range of environmental factors and unchallenged assumptions may influence the care of clients and may become obstacles to effective and ethical nursing practice. Critical social theory offers nursing a potentially valuable tool from which to illuminate and examine otherwise unexamined aspects of the environment.