scholarly journals Blood, Sweat and Tears: Women as Nurses Nursing Women in the Gynaecology Ward - a Feminist Interpretive Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Annette Diana Huntington
Keyword(s):  
Medical Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women Patients ◽  
Nursing Knowledge ◽  
Interpretive Study ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Area Of Concern

<p>This feminist study is an exploration of the subjectivity of women working as nurses within the gynaecological ward. Gynaecology has a long history as a unique area of concern to the health practitioners of any given period. However, recently with the development of modern gynaecology, this specialty has become based on male knowledge and male texts, women either as patients or nurses appear voiceless within this canon. Major texts within nursing mirror a medical construction of gynaecology, with the women involved in the discourse again absent from the literature. To explore the nurses' reality within the gynaecological ward I have undertaken a feminist interpretive study. Feminist research is gaining recognition within nursing and the contribution that such research can make to the development of nursing knowledge is acknowledged within the profession. However, it is within the work of nurse-scholars from Australia that feminist and postmodern ideas are most commonly debated. Their work provides an innovative approach to the exploration of nurses' work. To contribute to this debate I drew on certain specific notions from feminist and postmodern epistemologies to inform my work. These notions of the Other, difference, the body and discourse provided a unique way of viewing the practice of the nurses in this gynaecological setting. These epistemological concepts were then interwoven with feminist strategies to undertake my research. Through the process of feminist praxis, which included my working alongside the nurses and conducting in-depth interviews, three areas of general concern to the nurses emerged. Firstly the relationships, that is their relationships with each other as nurses and with their women patients. Secondly, the difficulties inherent in nurses' practice in this setting due to the nature of the experiences of the women they were nursing. These difficulties arose in relation to two particular situations, nursing women experiencing a mid-trimester termination and nursing women with cancer. Thirdly, the relationship with/in the medical discourse and individual doctors which, according to the nurses, had a major impact on their work. This study contributes to nursing knowledge by providing a forum for the voices of women as nurses, who nurse women in the gynaecological ward, to be heard. Using concepts from both feminist and postmodern theorising enabled the surfacing of the voices of nurses and interpretation of their experiences from a position of embodied reality. The diversity of the practice of nurses and the importance of recognising and working with this diversity became evident. Writing the text has been an important part of this research. Seeing writing as a political act in the way that many feminists do requires careful attention to the written word. Considering our fundamental nursing texts from a feminist perspective shows that many reflect a medical construction of gynaecological conditions and their treatment. Making explicit the voices of women as nurses is an important step in making women visible within the discourse of gynaecology. Nursing and feminism have much to offer each other and share an emancipatory goal of positive action to support and assist people in their lives.</p>

scholarly journals Blood, Sweat and Tears: Women as Nurses Nursing Women in the Gynaecology Ward - a Feminist Interpretive Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Annette Diana Huntington
Keyword(s):  
Medical Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women Patients ◽  
Nursing Knowledge ◽  
Interpretive Study ◽  
Feminist Study ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Area Of Concern

<p>This feminist study is an exploration of the subjectivity of women working as nurses within the gynaecological ward. Gynaecology has a long history as a unique area of concern to the health practitioners of any given period. However, recently with the development of modern gynaecology, this specialty has become based on male knowledge and male texts, women either as patients or nurses appear voiceless within this canon. Major texts within nursing mirror a medical construction of gynaecology, with the women involved in the discourse again absent from the literature. To explore the nurses' reality within the gynaecological ward I have undertaken a feminist interpretive study. Feminist research is gaining recognition within nursing and the contribution that such research can make to the development of nursing knowledge is acknowledged within the profession. However, it is within the work of nurse-scholars from Australia that feminist and postmodern ideas are most commonly debated. Their work provides an innovative approach to the exploration of nurses' work. To contribute to this debate I drew on certain specific notions from feminist and postmodern epistemologies to inform my work. These notions of the Other, difference, the body and discourse provided a unique way of viewing the practice of the nurses in this gynaecological setting. These epistemological concepts were then interwoven with feminist strategies to undertake my research. Through the process of feminist praxis, which included my working alongside the nurses and conducting in-depth interviews, three areas of general concern to the nurses emerged. Firstly the relationships, that is their relationships with each other as nurses and with their women patients. Secondly, the difficulties inherent in nurses' practice in this setting due to the nature of the experiences of the women they were nursing. These difficulties arose in relation to two particular situations, nursing women experiencing a mid-trimester termination and nursing women with cancer. Thirdly, the relationship with/in the medical discourse and individual doctors which, according to the nurses, had a major impact on their work. This study contributes to nursing knowledge by providing a forum for the voices of women as nurses, who nurse women in the gynaecological ward, to be heard. Using concepts from both feminist and postmodern theorising enabled the surfacing of the voices of nurses and interpretation of their experiences from a position of embodied reality. The diversity of the practice of nurses and the importance of recognising and working with this diversity became evident. Writing the text has been an important part of this research. Seeing writing as a political act in the way that many feminists do requires careful attention to the written word. Considering our fundamental nursing texts from a feminist perspective shows that many reflect a medical construction of gynaecological conditions and their treatment. Making explicit the voices of women as nurses is an important step in making women visible within the discourse of gynaecology. Nursing and feminism have much to offer each other and share an emancipatory goal of positive action to support and assist people in their lives.</p>

Doctor of Nursing Practice: Integrating Theory, Research, and Evidence-Based Practice

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget R. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Practice ◽  
Evidence Based Practice ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The Body ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Advanced Practice ◽  
Nursing Knowledge ◽  
Doctor Of Nursing Practice ◽  
Practice Nurses ◽  
Theory Research

A strong relationship exists between theory, research, and evidence-based practice; and these three entities are necessary to guide practice and contribute to the body of nursing knowledge. Doctor of nursing practice graduates can serve as leaders as they enter into their respective clinical practice areas. Through education of peers, along with translation and evaluation of current theoretical literature and empirical data, these advanced practice nurses can positively influence nursing practice and patient care.

scholarly journals Body experience in the east-slavonic culture tradition

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-82
Author(s):  
Ye. I. Kirilenko
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Emotional Intensity ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Body Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude ◽  
Culture Tradition

In the modern science, the body is an object of interest not only to the natural science and medicine, but also the humanities. Of special interest, in particular, for the medical discourse, is the ethnic body experience. The paper reveals features of the body experience in the east-slavonic culture from the analysis of the mythological tradition. This experience is characterized by the pronounced interest and ambivalent attitude to the body’s life, natural body standards; and emotional intensity. The experience of the social body is of highest priority in the culture.

scholarly journals 'The Full Monty'

M/C Journal ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Wolffram
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Political Act

The 'scholarly striptease', particularly as it is manifested in the United States, has attracted an increasing number of participants during the past decade. Unbeknownst to many, some academics have been getting their gear off in public; that is, publicly and provocatively showcasing their identities in order to promote their politics. While you might imagine that confessions about sexual orientation, ethnicity and pet hates could only serve to undermine academic authority, some American feminists -- and a small number of their male colleagues -- have nevertheless attempted to enhance their authority with such racy revelations. Nancy Miller's admission of a strained relationship with her father (Miller 143-147), or Jane Gallop's homage to the three 36-year-old men she had affairs with (Gallop 41), might make interesting reading for the academic voyeur (or the psychoanalyst), but what is their purpose beyond spectacle? The cynic might argue that self-promotion and intellectual celebrity or notoriety are the motivators -- and certainly he or she would have a point -- but within such performances of identity, and the metacriticism that clings to them, other reasons are cited. Apparently it is all to do with identity politics, that is, the use of your personal experience as the basis of your political stance. But while experience and the personal (remember "the personal is the political"?) have been important categories in feminist writing, the identity of the intellectual in academic discourse has traditionally been masked by a requisite objectivity. In a very real sense the foregrounding of academic identity by American feminists and those other brave souls who see fit to expose themselves, is a rejection of objectivity as the basis of intellectual authority. In the past, and also contemporaneously, intellectuals have gained and retained authority by subsuming their identity and their biases, and assuming an "objective" position. This new bid for authority, on the other hand, is based on a revelation of identity and biases. An example is Adrienne Rich's confession: "I have been for ten years a very public and visible lesbian. I have been identified as a lesbian in print both by myself and others" (Rich 199). This admission, which is not without risk, reveals possible biases and blindspots, but also allows Rich to speak with an authority which is grounded in experience of, and knowledge about lesbianism. Beyond the epistemological rejection of objectivity there appear to be other reasons for exposing one's "I", and its particular foibles, in scholarly writing. Some of these reasons may be considered a little more altruistic than others. For example, some intellectuals have used this practice, also known as "the personal mode", in a radical attempt to mark their culturally or critically marginal subjectivities. By straddling their vantage points within the marginalised subjectivity with which they identify, and their position in academia, these people can make visible the inequities they, and others like them, experience. Such performances are instances of both identity politics at work and the intellectual as activist. On the other hand, while this politically motivated use of "the personal mode" clearly has merit, cultural critics such as Elspeth Probyn have reminded us that in some cases the risks entailed by self-exposition are minimal (141), and that the discursive striptease is often little more than a vehicle for self-promotion. Certainly there is something of the tabloid in some of this writing, and even a tentative linking of the concepts of "academic" and "celebrity" -- Camille Paglia being the obvious example. While Paglia is among the few academics who are public celebrities, there are plenty of intellectuals who are famous within the academic community. It is often these people who can expose aspects of their identity without risking tenure, and it is often these same individuals who choose to confess what they had for breakfast, rather than their links with or concerns for something like a minority. For some, the advent of "the personal mode" particularly when it appears to contain a bid for academic or public fame signifies the denigration of academic discourse, its slow decline into journalistic gossip and ruin. For others, it is a truly political act allowing the participant to combine their roles as intellectual and activist. For me, it is a critical practice that fascinates and demands consideration in all its incarnations: as a bid for a new basis for academic authority, as a political act, and as a vehicle for self-promotion and fame. References Gallop, Jane. Thinking through the Body. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Miller, Nancy K. Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. New York: Routledge, 1991. Probyn, Elspeth. Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1993. Rich, Adrienne. Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985. New York: W.W Norton, 1986. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Heather Wolffram. "'The Full Monty': Academics, Identity and the 'Personal Mode'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.3 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/full.php>. Chicago style: Heather Wolffram, "'The Full Monty': Academics, Identity and the 'Personal Mode'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 3 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/full.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Heather Wolffram. (1998) 'The full monty': academics, identity and the 'personal mode'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(3). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9810/full.php> ([your date of access])

Pregnancy: Does it Change Exercise Participation?

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Goodwin ◽  
Jill Astbury ◽  
Joan McMeeken
Keyword(s):  
Muscle Tone ◽  
The Body ◽  
Response Sheet ◽  
Semistructured Interview ◽  
Exercise Participation ◽  
Nulliparous Women ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Body Cathexis ◽  
Exercise During Pregnancy ◽  
Shape Changes

The aim of the study was to determine whether the changes in body shape during pregnancy provided motivation for continued exercise participation. A longitudinal study was conducted with sixty five nulliparous women (mean age 30.3 years) who were interviewed twice during their pregnancies. The women were administered a semistructured interview, the Body Cathexis Scale and an exercise history questionnaire at approximately 17 weeks and 30 weeks. Interviews were recorded on a response sheet and audiotaped. Themes explored included motivation for exercise, advice from health practitioners, attitude to weight gain, mood change, and body image. At the initial interview women stated their intention either to continue or resume exercise in the second trimester of pregnancy. After the second interview the women were allocated to the 'exercise', 'middle' or 'nonexercise' groups based on their level of exercise participation. The study found that 40% of the women changed their level of exercise during pregnancy. The reasons women chose to exercise were in response to the promoted benefits of exercise. To maintain muscle tone for postnatal shape ranked third as a motive for women anticipating body size and shape changes. Women need encouragement and social support to maintain their commitment to exercise during pregnancy whether they choose groups or an 'exercise buddy'.

Spirituality in gynecological oncology: a review

2004 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Ramondetta ◽  
D. Sills
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Treatment ◽  
Gynecologic Oncology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Women Patients ◽  
Oncology Patients ◽  
Gynecological Oncology ◽  
Common Thread ◽  
Reproductive Cancers ◽  
The Many

AbstractThe following is a review of some of the work that has been published on issues related to definitions of spirituality and the many ways in which religious or spiritual concerns inform and can sometimes mold the relationships between gynecologic oncology patients, their physicians, and their health. Moreover, we have raised the question whether there is something specific or unique to the experience of women patients with reproductive cancers? Although it might seem clear to many of us that these patients are unique, it is hard to say exactly why. While there are differences between the various types of reproductive cancers, all share a common thread and all undermine the patient's identity as a woman. For oncologists, exploring the connection between the healing of the body and the healing of the spirit recognizes the comprehensive character of cancer treatment, and furthers the understanding that both physicians and patients share a knowledge that what patients lose in their battle with cancer is more than simply a medical life.

The Fiction of Duality

1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (20) ◽  
pp. 311-314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio Barba
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International School ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The Way ◽  
Odin Teatret

Eugenio Barba's work with Odin Teatret, and more recently with the International School of Theatre Anthropology, has always been substantiated by a body of developed critical theory, and in NTQ he has specifically developed his ideas about the nature of the actor's work in relation to its energies and their origins in experience and social ritual. In NTQ1 (1985), he outlined the problems involved in analyzing theatre-works rooted in performance rather than the written word; in NTQ4 (1985) he discussed his concept of the ‘dilated body’, through which the performed taps the wellsprings of art and experience; and in NTQ16 (1988), he expanded his idea of the ‘body-in-life’, describing the balance of energies which is essential for the actor to be fully realized. Here, he looks at the way in which the body is falsely perceived as the ‘actor's instrument’, as somehow separate from himself, and discusses the processes of ‘inculturation’ and ‘acculturation’ – which give the actor a true ‘second-nature’, and distinguish his work as ‘ritual in search of a meaning’.

scholarly journals The Performative Forum: Women, Body and Memory in the Foro de Escritores Chile

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jèssica Pujol Duran
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Women Poets ◽  
Linguistic Representation ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Poetry Reading ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Chilean Women

This article examines the contributions of three contemporary Chilean women poets, Cecilia Vicuña, Anamaría Briede and Luna Montenegro to the UK Writers Forum and its Chilean counterpart, El Foro de Escritores. In the early 2000s, these groups produced two ongoing workshops that focused on poetic experimentation and performance and valued the oral over the written word. Entering into dialogue with Charles Bernstein’s analysis of the poetry reading, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s performative turn in the arts, and Joseph Roach theorization of performance and memory, this article unravels Chilean women’s poetics within a transnational context. It proposes that the value these women poets placed on aurality facilitated new engagement with Pre-Columbian cultures and languages as well as reconsiderations of the intimacy of the body and its linguistic representation.

scholarly journals I Disturbi Alimentari Nella Narrativa Femminile Italiana Dall'unità al Miracolo Economico: Eating Disorders in Italian Women's Writings From Unification to the Economic Boom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Francesca Calamita
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Binge Eating ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Terminology ◽  
Italian Women Writers ◽  
Italian Women

<p>In the feminist discourse about women’s relationship with food developed in the 1970s and 1980s, eating disorders are perceived as a complex reaction to traditional models of female identity. In the writings of Kim Chernin, Marilyn Lawrence, Morag MacSween and Susie Orbach, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and other atypical relationships with food and body emerge as an unidiomatic language adopted by women to communicate what words cannot express. Paradoxically, eating disorders become instruments of selfempowerment: on the one hand, unconventional eaters develop abnormal attitudes towards their bodies, but on the other hand, by employing such metaphorical language, they find a way to question the social constrictions and cultural contradictions of women’s position in patriarchal culture. Italian women writers have portrayed openly anorexic, bulimic and compulsive eaters in the characters of their novels and autobiographies since the late 1980s. From Clara Sereni’s pioneering Casalinghitudine (1987) to Michela Marzano’s controversial Volevo essere una farfalla (2011), the fictional depiction of eating disorders in Italian literature has increased epidemically in the last few decades, mirroring the rapid spread of these syndromes. However, as I suggest in my thesis, since the late nineteenth century, when anorexia was officially diagnosed by the medical discourse, Italian women writers such as Neera (1848-1918), Sibilla Aleramo (1876-1960), Wanda Bontà (1902-1986), Paola Masino (1908-1989), Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991) and others have presented in their fiction a variety of female characters who experience a troubled relationship with their body and with food. In each case, this is coupled with the portrayal of the rebellious feelings that the characters experience towards women’s preestablished social roles. In Neera’s Teresa (1886) and L’indomani (1889), in Aleramo’s Una donna (1906), in Bontà’s Signorinette (1938), Masino’s Nascita e morte della massaia (1945) and in Ginzburg’s “La madre” (1948) and Le voci della sera (1961), as well as other narrative works, the authors do not use the medical terminology of eating disorders in order to illustrate their protagonists’ eating problems, but they often depict behaviours which recall anorexic and bulimic attitudes, as described by the scientific discourse on these pathologies. The anorexic symptoms displayed by the characters become therefore their unspoken protest against the socio-cultural constrictions imposed on Italian women. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, I frame my analysis of modern and contemporary Italian women’s fiction within the feminist perspectives on anorexia, bulimia and binge eating developed in the 1970s and 1980s. By doing so, I attempt to decode a controversial female experience and the language Italian women writers used to express it before it became officially acknowledged as a pathology that reflects women’s anxiety about their identity. Long before feminist scholars identified the strong link between social context and eating disorders in the closing decades of the twentieth century, these writers depict women using the languages of food and the body as one of the possible means of rebelling against patriarchal repression.</p>

scholarly journals Spinsterization of Women or Spinster Women in the Arab Women’s Literature: An Imposed Reality or a Rejected Choice? Hayfā’ Bayṭār’s Novel, Nisā’ bi Aqfāl/Women in Locks1, as a Sample

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Hanan Bishara
Keyword(s):  
Women's Literature ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Written Word

In my opinion, the art of the novel is an invented female art. It is a product of the hidden depths and interiors of the woman’s suffering. “Every woman is pregnant of her ‘novel’ as one critic argued and therefore, she does not see it necessary to write it on paper as long as she lives sit. The woman is a creator and an artist in her nature and it is sufficient for us to say the mistress of narrators is a woman called Scheherazade, who is the mistress of the tales the Arab nights, namely, Alf Laila wa Laila. What proves my view strongly is the historical error that literary historians and critics committed when they argued that the author of Alf Laila wa Laila is an ‘anonymous author’ instead of analyzing it stylistically in order to understand that its author is an ‘anonymous woman’ who could not put her name on the tales under a religious oppressive culture that is full of taboos. In my opinion, Hayfā’ Bayṭār is the mistress of female narration in her search of ‘lost freedom’. Nothing was left for the woman through which she could achieve her existence except talking and writing, after she had been raped physically and spiritually. In my opinion, the novel of this study, Nisā’ bi Aqfāl/Women in Locks is a novel of yearning for freedom for the women who live under norms and traditions that escalate with the escalation of extremism and fanatism, and suppression of the prohibited trilogy of religion, sex and politics. The man managed to imprison the woman and captivate her with his taboos behind invisible bars that made her live in an exile, and alienation within her homeland. Like Scheherazade, she can either talk or die, and ‘death’ here is in a memory that rapes one’s soul as the body is raped. By the written ‘word’, she exposes ‘rape’ and protests against injustice, and by self-revelation, the woman’s presence overcomes her absence. Writing is a medical instrumentality that grants the woman liberation, emancipation, and purification with which, she reveals the psychological accumulations and piled bitter memories, and denude a reality which resembles a play that is repeated on the ears of history and its thresholds.

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