Since 1960 Loretta T. Zderad and myself in dialogue, together, and with
groups of nurses in graduate schools and in nursing service situations
have reflected on, explored, and questioned our own and others' nursing
situational experiences. Over this period we have come to value and
appreciate the meaningfulness of these situations to man's existence.
This constantly augmented our feelings of responsibility for
contributing to these situations beneficially. Therefore, we looked at
them for their tractability to research methodology. Their loadedness
with variations, changes, uncontrollables, and our negative feelings
about the implications of viewing human beings as predictable left the
strict scientism of positivistic method wanting at this stage of man's
knowing. We saw objectivity in nursing situations or our questions,
nursing questions, in the realm of needing to now how man experienced
his existence. This objectivity, or man's real lived reality
paradoxically is subjectively ridden, man-world.
The existential literature dealt with substantive themes encountered in
nursing experiences. As I previously stated this literature evolves from
a phenomenological {9} approach to studying being and existence. This
approach to studying, describing, and developing an artistic science of
nursing became Dr. Zderad's and my long-sought haven. All along
existentialism and phenomenology had been ours 'and many nurses' "what"
and "how." Now we had labels that were acceptable and reputable to
many--most of all to ourselves.