Mentorship, often viewed as a central capacity of leadership, is acknowledged as influential in growing nurse leaders. Mentoring relationships are perceived as empowering connections offering a dynamic guided experience to promote growth and development in personal and professional life. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach informed by Heidegger and Gadamer was used to explore understandings and experiences of mentorship for nurse leadership by 13 Australian nurse leaders. We found that learning and transformation associated with becoming a nurse leader mentor was experienced as (...) an enduring evolutionary process. Participants' life journeys provided experiences that developed their understandings and established their personal identity as a leader and mentor. We considered the journey motif in terms of its inextricable connection with lived time and used Heidegger's ecstasies of temporality as a lens to understand how the temporal dimensions of past, present and future influenced and shaped the development of nurse leader mentors. We found that our temporal existence influences interpretation of ourselves and the world. Individuals can benefit from multiple separate mentoring interludes, with different mentors, over a lifetime. For some nurses, becoming a leader and mentor is a lifelong transformative process that grows from diverse experience and influential role modelling rather than formal instruction. (shrink)

Within the caring science paradigm, variations of a method of interpretation inspired by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's theory of interpretation are used. This method consists of several levels of interpretation: a naïve reading, a structural analysis, and a critical analysis and discussion. Within this paradigm, the aim of this article is to present and discuss a means of creating distance in the interpretation and the text structure by using narration in a poetic language linked to the meaning of the (...) text. Ricoeur's ‘Hermeneutical function of distanciation’ will be introduced, and this concept of distanciation will be illustrated with reference to narrations from a study of patient's life experiences living with chronic illness and home mechanical ventilation in Denmark. Distanciation in the interpretation objectifies the text, and narration in a poetic language creates a particular kind of mediation in the interpretation. That narration represents an interpreted understanding of the whole, which facilitates an appropriate and evocative presentation of the interpreted data. This way of objectifying the text through narration can contribute yet another perspective to Ricoeur's rich and varied theory of interpretation. (shrink)

This study articulates the relational constituents of good care beyond techno‐rational competence. Neoliberal healthcare means that notions of care are readily commodified and reduced to quantifiable assessments and checklists. This novel research investigated accounts of good care provided by nursing, medical, allied and auxiliary staff. The Heideggerian phenomenological study was undertaken in acute medical‐surgical wards, investigating the contextual, communicative nature of care. The study involved interviews with 17 participants: 3 previous patients, 3 family members and 11 staff. Data were analysed (...) iteratively, dwelling with stories and writing and rewriting to surface the phenomenality of good care. The data set highlighted the following essential constituents: authentic care: caring encompassing solicitude (fürsorge); impromptu care: caring beyond role category; sustained care: caring beyond specialist parameters; attuned care: caring encompassing family and culture; and insightful care: caring beyond assessment and diagnosis. The findings are clinically significant because they indicate the importance of nurse leaders and educators harnessing the potential capacity of all healthcare workers to participate in good care. Healthcare workers reported that participating in or witnessing good care was uplifting and added meaning to their work, contributing to a sense of shared humanity. (shrink)

Intensive care unit nursing is an interpretive practice. Hermeneutics, as an interpretive philosophy, is an ideal approach to make meaning of the ambiguities that exist in this intensive practice setting. This paper uses the underpinnings from Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to explore the idea that ICU nursing is an interpretive practice.

Research Question: What are patients’ experiences of technology in adult intensive care? Research Objectives: -To explore patients’ perceptions of receiving care in a technological environment -To explore patients’ perceptions of how technology has influenced their experience of care Background: Technology is fundamental to the physical recovery of critically ill patients in intensive care (ICU), however, there is a suggestion in the literature that its presence may dehumanise patient care and distract the nurse from attending to patients’ psychosocial needs. Little attention (...) has been paid to patients’ perceptions of receiving care in a technological environment. The purpose of this research, therefore, was to explore patients’ experiences of technology and care within ICU. Methods: This study was informed by Heideggerian phenomenology. The research took place in a university hospital in England. Nineteen participants who had been a patient in ICU were interviewed using a semi-structured approach. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed utilising Van Manen’s framework. Findings: Resulting themes were ‘My Useless Body’ which describes how participants experienced their body as dysfunctional, disconnected and invaded by technology, ‘Making Sense of It’, which describes how participants rationalised their experiences by constructing a story, and ‘Technology and Care’, which describes how and why participants endured technologies in ICU. Conclusions: The disintegrated body is central to the critically ill’s experiences in ICU. Families play an important role in helping patients make sense of their experiences by filling in gaps in memory and helping them to sort the real from unreal memories. Families therefore require support and information resources in fulfilling this role. Patients experience technology and care as a series of paradoxical relationships: alienating yet reassuring, uncomfortable yet comforting, impersonal yet personal. Nurses maintaining a close and supportive presence and providing personal comfort and care may minimise the invasive and isolating potential of technology. (shrink)