A collaboration between King’s and the Bethlem Gallery, Nursing the image is a photographic project that explores how care is represented within institutions and across the media through artist-led workshops and using recent research addressing issues of stress and burnout in mental health nursing.

Nursing the image uses photography, curating and installation to test the power of self-representation both as a way of modelling self-care for staff and service-users and as a strategy for stress reduction amongst mental health nurses.

Media images of nursing do not necessarily communicate the complexity of the role and may contribute to the pressure nurses place on themselves to perform. In a series of artist-led workshops, images will be used as prompts for discussion of how nurses are seen and how they see themselves. The project’s aim is to create a reflective space in the Gallery where nurses can discuss what kind of images dominate understandings of the profession and how these might influence their capacity to care for others and for themselves.