In their 1996 study, Smith and Hukill noted that, although a significant body of literature existed regarding nurses impaired by substance use, to the date of that study there was no literature available studying nurses who were impaired by emotional or psychological factors (Smith & Hukill 1996). And, more remarkably, the author of this paper has found scarce mention of the issue in the literature, even to this date. This almost complete lack of acknowledgement or investigation of the issue may in itself lend support to the contentions in the existing literature – that nurses are most judgemental and stigmatizing of their own when it comes to mental illness, and ‘turn a blind eye’.