Navigating Professional and Personal Knowing Through Reflective Storytelling Amidst Covid-19

The paper offers space for dialogue illustrating reflection as lived, exploring both my personal and professional experiences of grief and loss surrounding the death of my Dad from Covid −19. In my role as a nurse educator, I share understandings of reflection in facilitating learning and person centered practices with students. I illustrate my approach with two stories generating a narrative giving testimony to those who have died and highlighting the ensuing grief for those who have cared for older people during the pandemic. The first reflective story has been shared with students and snapshots of student responses during virtual sessions are incorporated. The second story shifts to a more personal focus reflecting personal knowing. Insights emerge bringing forth personal and professional knowing, about the art and science of holistic nursing. I explore the challenges in separating ourselves from personal knowledge and experience in reflective writing. I invite readers to take time to pause amidst a global healthcare pandemic to consider the potential of reflection to support nurses in recovering from suffering experienced during a pandemic.

More Than Meets the Eye: Explicating the Essence of Gerontology Nursing

<p><b>The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore the essence of gerontology nursing. This project sought to look beyond the practical tasks and skills of gerontology nursing to reveal what is more than meets the eye and thereby explicate the essence of gerontological nursing practice.</b></p> <p>Gerontology nursing is troubled by its unpopular status and negative image that in turn has serious implications for the recruitment and retention of nurses who are both willing and able to work in this field of nursing. The purpose for doing this study was to unveil a deeper meaning and understanding of gerontology nursing, thus contributing to its value and worth as a speciality area of nursing.</p> <p>Conversations with four gerontology nurses were taped, transcribed and then analysed using van Manen’s (1990) approach to researching lived experience. From the analysis, four cardinal elements emerged: true acceptance, personal knowing, being present, and being alive. Those four cardinal elements were reworked and further analysed to reveal three central aspects or essences of gerontology nursing. These essences were the centrality of temporality, the interconnectedness of human relationships, and the significance of the lived body. Temporality is demonstrated by nursing application of objective, or clock time, as well as subjectively in regards to the lived time of the clients. Interconnectedness is the lived human relationship between nurse and client and is represented by commitment, presencing/giving of self, connecting, and knowing the client holistically. The third essence is corporeality, which is portrayed by the gerontology nurses’ distinguishing characteristics and their perception of the lived body of the nursed. The final analysis unveiled caring for the body, the act of seeing, and the joy of care as emergent essences of gerontology nursing. Language of nursing in relationship to ‘basic nursing care’ is critiqued for its potential to devalue gerontology nursing and, by association, old people.</p> <p>The significance of these findings is that there is more than meets the eye in gerontology nursing, however, it is not widely known. To balance the abundance of literature about the science of gerontology nursing practice more research needs to be focused on the art. Establishing and disseminating a clearer, complete picture of gerontology nursing would go toward not only changing its negative image, but may also address recruitment and retention issues. Furthermore, this study has highlighted the need to recruit nurses who possess the necessary personal attributes to ensure they ‘fit’ into gerontology nursing.</p>

More Than Meets the Eye: Explicating the Essence of Gerontology Nursing

<p><b>The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore the essence of gerontology nursing. This project sought to look beyond the practical tasks and skills of gerontology nursing to reveal what is more than meets the eye and thereby explicate the essence of gerontological nursing practice.</b></p> <p>Gerontology nursing is troubled by its unpopular status and negative image that in turn has serious implications for the recruitment and retention of nurses who are both willing and able to work in this field of nursing. The purpose for doing this study was to unveil a deeper meaning and understanding of gerontology nursing, thus contributing to its value and worth as a speciality area of nursing.</p> <p>Conversations with four gerontology nurses were taped, transcribed and then analysed using van Manen’s (1990) approach to researching lived experience. From the analysis, four cardinal elements emerged: true acceptance, personal knowing, being present, and being alive. Those four cardinal elements were reworked and further analysed to reveal three central aspects or essences of gerontology nursing. These essences were the centrality of temporality, the interconnectedness of human relationships, and the significance of the lived body. Temporality is demonstrated by nursing application of objective, or clock time, as well as subjectively in regards to the lived time of the clients. Interconnectedness is the lived human relationship between nurse and client and is represented by commitment, presencing/giving of self, connecting, and knowing the client holistically. The third essence is corporeality, which is portrayed by the gerontology nurses’ distinguishing characteristics and their perception of the lived body of the nursed. The final analysis unveiled caring for the body, the act of seeing, and the joy of care as emergent essences of gerontology nursing. Language of nursing in relationship to ‘basic nursing care’ is critiqued for its potential to devalue gerontology nursing and, by association, old people.</p> <p>The significance of these findings is that there is more than meets the eye in gerontology nursing, however, it is not widely known. To balance the abundance of literature about the science of gerontology nursing practice more research needs to be focused on the art. Establishing and disseminating a clearer, complete picture of gerontology nursing would go toward not only changing its negative image, but may also address recruitment and retention issues. Furthermore, this study has highlighted the need to recruit nurses who possess the necessary personal attributes to ensure they ‘fit’ into gerontology nursing.</p>

How Do Nurses Apply Personal Knowing to Patient Care? A Grounded Theory Study

Background: Personal Knowing (PK) is an expression of self-knowledge concerning others. Besides, PK is the most difficult as well as the most essential pattern of knowing in nursing. The current study aimed to explore how nurses apply personal knowledge in patient care. Methods: This qualitative study was performed based on the grounded theory method. The study was performed in different hospital wards of Tehran City, Iran. The required data were generated using semi-structured interviews and clinical observations. Finally, 15 interviews and 8 sessions of observation were included in the data analysis. Strauss and Corbin’s constant comparison method (2008) was used to analyze the collected data. Results: The obtained findings suggested that nurses use the PK pattern in 3 forms of the therapeutic use of self, self-centering, and elimination of therapeutic communication. The therapeutic use of self was accompanied by kindness and amiability; efforts to strengthen the patients’ spirit; giving comfort and hope; humor; talking in a friendly manner, and gaining the patient’s trust and cooperation. Self-centering was characterized by establishing silence in the ward, strict enforcement of the rules, setting more rules, and developing rules for the method of care provision. Eliminating the therapeutic communication was accompanied by the referral of patients to others, avoidance, reluctance, and mechanical care. Conclusion: The obtained findings added to the knowledge of the patterns of knowing in nursing. The therapeutic use of self leads to a positive outcome of care as well as the satisfaction of nurses and patients. However, a self-centering and eliminating therapeutic relationship will raise an inappropriate image of nursing.

Steps towards a theory of the knowledge-society

During the last decades, knowledge has attracted the greatest attention in a growing number of disciplines, generating a deluge of literature. However, it has yet to become the object of a fully established sociology of knowledge able to fulfil the challenges of present society, often called the knowledge-society. We posit knowledge as a basis on which to model social life, proposing a three-dimensional approach to social reality (i.e., individuals, social aggregates, knowledge). Looking at knowledge as at ‘a cooperative good’ and a communicative process, we then apply the same three dimensions to knowledge itself as a sociological production, ending up with a typology encompassing three knowledge families (intellectual, practical and objectified) and three ways of access (direct personal knowing, indirect social acquaintance, externally recognised and personally introjected acknowledge). Steps towards a theory of knowledge-society are then proposed.