Often, when it seems that one has done his very best, it is wise to have
a trusted other react to conceptualizations. Another's questions can
bring to the conceptualizer's awareness thought connections that moved
him along and that he has failed to convey. Also, such a reader can
indicate aspects of thought trips the writer took that add nothing to
the issue at stake and weaken his message. Too, another's response can
make apparent to a writer the need to clarify meaning. This
clarification may merely entail a better choice of words or phrases, or
it may suggest the use of a meaningful metaphor, analogy, or parable.
These last imaginative forms of expression we frequently use
meaningfully, sometimes like a shorthand, with our intimates. A phrase,
metaphor, or analogy conveys with an immediacy the quality or spirit of
an event. For example, a nurse working in a psychiatric hospital unit
speaking of a patient said, "He came down the hall looking like an
accident about to happen." A page of technical description could not
have given me as much feeling for what she and the patient were
experiencing at that moment. In nurses' efforts to express objectively,
scientifically, and eruditely such modes of expression are often deleted
from our written professional works. It is as if we enforce the rules of
medical record charting of precision, conciseness, and use of "weasel"
words onto all our written works to the detriment of a theoretical and
professional enduring body of nursing knowledge being actualized. It
takes considerable pain and endeavor to find egress from such human
programming. With it we have purified, equalized, wearied, and
dehumanized supreme experiences of human existence. And, we have negated
the meaning and importance of ourselves and nursing. How often have you
heard, "I am _just_ a nurse"?
Phenomenology requires rigorous investment into respectfully,
appreciatively, and acceptingly making evident our lived worlds and
their ramifications for the now, the past, and the anticipated future.
Nursing literature of this caliber would call and inspire those who
attended it to further nursing practice and responsibly share the
meaning they attribute to their area of specialized dedication.
The raw data of our lived nursing worlds do not easily reveal their
meanings or messages. Many see their worlds only superficially, and
themselves as mere functions. How often a nurse is surprised,
confounded, on hearing a relative or friend speak of a nursing event in
their lives that may have occurred {62} from 10 to 40 years previously.
Frequently persons express appreciation for the meaning these events
have had for them through the years. They remember the pleasure, anger,
pain, fear, and/or joy they experienced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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