In the crucible of the pandemic, it has never before been clearer that, to ensure the relevance and even the survival of the discipline, nursing must cultivate a radical imagination. In the paper that follows, I trace the imperative for conjuring a radical imagination for nursing. In this fever dream for nursing futures, built on speculative visions of what could be, I draw on anarchist, abolitionist, posthuman, Black feminist, new materialist and other big ideas to plant seeds of generative insurrection and creative resistance. In thinking through a radical imagination, I unpack the significance of reparatory history for nursing, a discipline founded on normative whiteness. From there, I consider what it would take to shift the capitalist frame of healthcare to one of mutual aid, which requires the deep work of abolition. With a radical imagination that breaks down the enclosures that contain us through reparatory history, mutual aid and abolition, kinship becomes urgently possible.

As nurses on this pale blue dot, the impending climate crisis requires us to engage with our world and communities differently if we hope to ensure our planetary survival, human and non. Imagining the next 50 years of nursing theory, we advance a posthuman critique of the discipline. In this article, we lay out a posthumanist critique of nursing. We urge nurses to critically engage with the realities that shape our present and future on a deteriorating planet, decentering the primacy ofhumansas we engage with the world all around and assemble posthuman tools for our analyses.

We wish to advance a theory of nursing that intentionally engages in questions of politics and economics, centering equity and justice as a foundation for the provision of nursing care. As health care costs rise and health disparities widen, nurses have a clear imperative to develop alternative health care delivery models unmoored from the conventional employment and profit-driven structures that now disappoint us. This mandate arises from our disciplinary focus that emphasizes social justice as a social and moral good linked to the human services nurses provide. This kind of sociopolitical engagement is not auxiliary to nursing but rather central to our ethos. A health care environment that prioritizes profit over the well-being of people is an anathema to our disciplinary focus which, we believe, should center communities and people. The health care system that has forged nursing in the United States, transforms nursing into a commodity. This reinscribes inequality for those who are unable to access care, contributes to environmental harm through profligate hospital pollution and waste, and exploits nursing staff as workers. Nurses have a history of both upholding oppressive systems that disenfranchise segments of the public, usually poor, often People of Color, and engaging in innovative alternatives to the status quo. We wish to foster revolutionary alternative care delivery models that free us from the neoliberal confines of for-profit health care. Ultimately, we argue, nursing as a discipline and a science cannot neglect our role as whistleblowers and change agents. Nor can we presuppose that our dysfunctional and harmful health care structure in the United States is a foregone conclusion. Health care is constructed, which means it can be reconstructed. If we wish to realize our emancipatory potential as nurses, critically examining our role in upholding oppressive structures is a critical step toward a more robust future of nursing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in health care continues to expand at a rapid rate, impacting both nurses and communities we accompany in care. We argue algorithmic bias is but a symptom of a more systemic and longstanding problem: power imbalances related to the creation, development, and use of health care technologies. This commentary responds to Drs. O'Connor and Booth's 2022 article, "Algorithmic bias in health care: Opportunities for nurses to improve equality in the age of artificial intelligence." Nurses need not 'reinvent the wheel' when it comes to AI policy, curricula, or ethics. We can and should follow the lead of communities already working 'from the margins' who provide ample guidance. Its neither feasible nor just to expect individual nurses to counter systemic injustice in health care through individual actions, more technocentric curricula, or industry partnerships. We need disciplinary supports for collective action to renegotiate power for AI tech.