Being and Becoming an Exemplary Nurse - an Authentic Journey

<p>The aims of this study were to illuminate the joint constructions of exemplary nurses and their lived experiences of being and becoming one. Inherent in being ‘exemplary’ was the notion of ‘becoming’, which involved the integration of knowledge and experiences through reflecting on the day-to-day of ‘being a nurse’. Being exemplary was not about perfection but learning from every experience and integrating these into becoming. To elucidate these phenomena, I developed a creative qualitative and participatory method informed by Guba and Lincoln’s Constructivist, and van Manen’s Human Science Approaches, underpinned by Glaser’s Emergent Philosophy. Ten exemplary nurses were recruited and interviewed three times. They also provided supplementary data such as photos, poetry and writings. This interview data was transcribed and imported into the computer programme QSR NVivo. This programme allowed for management of the raw data and facilitated coding and categorising, while remaining grounded in the whole text and its meanings. Analysis occurred through first and second level categorising and the use of writing as method. Writing became a way of knowing – assisting discovery and allowing reflection on the data in order to connect the categories and themes together in a coherent and workable whole. The above method led to the following emergent findings. The pivotal construct was Authentic Being, through living a reflective life, surrounded by the major constructs of Love of Nursing, Making a Difference, Critical Friends, Walking the Talk and Backpack patients. These constructs directed a specific and comprehensive review of both the philosophical and nursing literature. This review was not used to expand or enlarge the findings but to enlighten, illuminate and clarify. Significant philosophical ideas were extended, developed and synthesised with the findings. Noteworthy was the expansion of Heidegger’s notion of B/being: where capitalisation denotes essence and lower case symbolises the verb – to be. The use of B/being represents the merging of a person’s essence and being into one. The notion of B/being and B/becoming through time – specifically human-lived-time was also important. B/being and B/becoming exemplary was an authentic embodiment of being self with being with others – a true holistic B/being-in-the-world. The purposeful review of significant nursing theorists and the general nursing literature demonstrated that this study’s participants had attributes and skills comparable to those described and ‘called’ for. In addition, this study’s participants often went further than these descriptions, and demonstrated and exemplified a true holistic B/being – where they were more than the sum of their parts and integrated all aspects of themselves through critical reflection in order to B/be and B/become. Through synthesis of this knowledge a definition of B/being and B/being an Exemplary Nurse was developed - Exemplary nurses authentically embody being themselves – with being with others – they are B/being-in-the-world. Situated in human-lived-time they use experiences carried in their backpacks to actively ‘Be’ who they want to ‘Become’. At the spiralling intersection between past and future they use their love of nursing and critical friends to make a difference for those they care for and to walk the talk with their colleagues. The new knowledge that emerged from this research has profound implications for everyday nursing practice, undergraduate and post graduate nursing education, and for Charge Nurses and Senior Nurses, who are of vital importance as role models, mentors and critical friends. The results are significant and are important for nurses and the nursing profession and contribute to, and, advance nursing knowledge.</p>

Being and Becoming an Exemplary Nurse - an Authentic Journey

<p>The aims of this study were to illuminate the joint constructions of exemplary nurses and their lived experiences of being and becoming one. Inherent in being ‘exemplary’ was the notion of ‘becoming’, which involved the integration of knowledge and experiences through reflecting on the day-to-day of ‘being a nurse’. Being exemplary was not about perfection but learning from every experience and integrating these into becoming. To elucidate these phenomena, I developed a creative qualitative and participatory method informed by Guba and Lincoln’s Constructivist, and van Manen’s Human Science Approaches, underpinned by Glaser’s Emergent Philosophy. Ten exemplary nurses were recruited and interviewed three times. They also provided supplementary data such as photos, poetry and writings. This interview data was transcribed and imported into the computer programme QSR NVivo. This programme allowed for management of the raw data and facilitated coding and categorising, while remaining grounded in the whole text and its meanings. Analysis occurred through first and second level categorising and the use of writing as method. Writing became a way of knowing – assisting discovery and allowing reflection on the data in order to connect the categories and themes together in a coherent and workable whole. The above method led to the following emergent findings. The pivotal construct was Authentic Being, through living a reflective life, surrounded by the major constructs of Love of Nursing, Making a Difference, Critical Friends, Walking the Talk and Backpack patients. These constructs directed a specific and comprehensive review of both the philosophical and nursing literature. This review was not used to expand or enlarge the findings but to enlighten, illuminate and clarify. Significant philosophical ideas were extended, developed and synthesised with the findings. Noteworthy was the expansion of Heidegger’s notion of B/being: where capitalisation denotes essence and lower case symbolises the verb – to be. The use of B/being represents the merging of a person’s essence and being into one. The notion of B/being and B/becoming through time – specifically human-lived-time was also important. B/being and B/becoming exemplary was an authentic embodiment of being self with being with others – a true holistic B/being-in-the-world. The purposeful review of significant nursing theorists and the general nursing literature demonstrated that this study’s participants had attributes and skills comparable to those described and ‘called’ for. In addition, this study’s participants often went further than these descriptions, and demonstrated and exemplified a true holistic B/being – where they were more than the sum of their parts and integrated all aspects of themselves through critical reflection in order to B/be and B/become. Through synthesis of this knowledge a definition of B/being and B/being an Exemplary Nurse was developed - Exemplary nurses authentically embody being themselves – with being with others – they are B/being-in-the-world. Situated in human-lived-time they use experiences carried in their backpacks to actively ‘Be’ who they want to ‘Become’. At the spiralling intersection between past and future they use their love of nursing and critical friends to make a difference for those they care for and to walk the talk with their colleagues. The new knowledge that emerged from this research has profound implications for everyday nursing practice, undergraduate and post graduate nursing education, and for Charge Nurses and Senior Nurses, who are of vital importance as role models, mentors and critical friends. The results are significant and are important for nurses and the nursing profession and contribute to, and, advance nursing knowledge.</p>

The Cyclical Time of the Body and the Linear Time of Modernity

While linear time results from the measurement of physical events, the temporality of life is characterized by cyclical processes, which also manifest themselves in bodily experience. This applies for the periodicity of heartbeat, respiration, sleep–wake cycle, or circadian hormone secretion, among others. Cyclical repetitions are also found in the recurring phases of need, drive, and satisfaction. Finally, the cyclical structure of bodily time manifests itself at an extended level in the form of body memory. However, this cyclical structure of lived time comes into tension with the orders of linear time which have been increasingly established in Western societies since the modern age. This tension creates both individual as well as societal conflicts and may also result in psychopathological phenomena such as depression and burn-out syndromes.

Vital Conjunctures in Compound Crises: Conceptualising Young People’s Education Trajectories in Protracted Displacement in Jordan and Lebanon

This paper emerges out of a study with 293 young people (Syrians, Palestinians and nationals) living in contexts of compound crises and protracted displacement in Jordan and Lebanon. In the paper, we discuss how young people’s education trajectories can be conceptualised, operationalised and studied. We synthesise different approaches to understanding and analysing such trajectories into a framework that captures the intricate and multi-directional ways that young people navigate towards uncertain futures. The framework on multi-directional trajectories takes its starting point from an understanding of Victoria Browne’s ‘lived time’, captured through how different temporalities come together in one person’s story. After presenting our framework and the context in the first part of the paper, the second part applies the framework to analyse the ‘vital conjuncture’ of leaving education. By analysing leaving education as lived time, we create nuanced insights into how this vital conjuncture can be understood to shape young peoples’ trajectories. In conclusion, we discuss the value of understanding trajectories as lived time by illuminating how young people experience and navigate their education trajectories.

The Bodily Experiences of Music Teachers

This paper deals with the specifics of a music teacher's work in kindergarten and presents an empirical study, based on the approach of hermeneutic phenomenology. In the research outcomes, the experiences of the music teacher's work in kindergarten are presented through their stories about memorable moments of their professional activity. Initially, in accordance with the theory of Max van Manen, the research data were viewed through the prism of five dimensions (lived time, lived space, lived self-others, lived things, and lived body), typical of all phenomena. The paper discusses one of them, i.e. the teachers' experience from the perspective of the lived body. The stories demonstrate how through the looks, facial mimicry, and body language, moments of the teacher's everyday routine are revealed that would otherwise be overlooked or considered irrelevant.

Understanding Youth’s Lived Experience of Anxiety through Metaphors: A Qualitative, Arts-Based Study

Living with anxiety can be a complex, biopsychosocial experience that is unique to each person and embedded in their contexts and lived worlds. Scales and questionnaires are necessary to quantify anxiety, yet these approaches are not always able to reflect the lived experience of psychological distress experienced by youth. Guided by hermeneutic phenomenology, our research aimed to amplify the voices of youth living with anxiety. Fifty-eight youth living with anxiety took part in in-depth, open-ended interviews and participatory arts-based methods (photovoice and ecomaps). Analysis was informed by van Manen’s method of data analysis with attention to lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived relationships, as well as the meanings of living with anxiety. Youth relied on the following metaphors to describe their experiences: A shrinking world; The heavy, heavy backpack; Play, pause, rewind, forward; and A fine balance. Overall, youth described their anxiety as a monster, contributing to feelings of fear, loss, and pain, but also hope. The findings from this study can contribute to the reduction of barriers in knowledge translation by encouraging the use of narrative and visual metaphors as a communicative tool to convey youth’s lived experience of anxiety to researchers, clinicians, and the public.

Times in Place: Moving, Dwelling, Belonging

This chapter connects migrant experiences of temporality to their dwelling within, mobilities across, and attachments to place including nation states, towns, cities and homes. The ethnographic analysis in this chapter is concerned with how time is lived within and across different places, and how rhythms of local, lived time are shaped by the time-regimes that structure migrants' lives. It shows how, for middling migrants, different local places across mobility trajectories have different temporal rhythms and paces of life and influence differently ordered biographies. Migrants' sense of time in place is relational, that is, it is made meaningful through how places enable time to be synchronous with others, either via daily routines of encounter with friends and family, or via the larger scale and collective social valuing of time. Migrants understand present, localized times in relation to the other places that are linked in sequence across the dual trajectories of their geographic mobility and their mobility across the different stages and transitions of their lives. Their positioning as middling migrant shapes the imaginaries and realities of these trajectories across, places, times and indeed, times within places.

Chronomobilities: 21st-Century Migration and Lived Time

This chapter sets up the book's central concepts and arguments, drawing on existing literature on the turn towards temporal analysis in migration studies over the last decade. It sketches out in detail how chronomobilities are structured through specific time-regimes and time-logics. The chapter seeks to work through the complexities of the relationship between migrant temporalities and migrant mobilities, and to build the framework that guides understandings of this relationship and the experiences it produces in migrants' lives. The concept of chronomobilities underpins the analysis in the remainder of the book. This portmanteau achieves two fairly prosaic aims. It simply and concisely suggests and reiterates the indivisible and mutually constitutive nature of temporality and mobility, and it names a framework made up of time-regimes and time-logics that provides the scaffolding for making our way through the complexity and multiplicity of migrant experiences of time.