Through words we humanly share the meaning to us of our behavior,
experience, and profession. Words attest to and endure. Thus, a
professional history is possible, accrues, and has lasting duration. The
study of the nursing event itself and its conceptualization as proposed
in humanistic nursing practice theory is an application of
phenomenology. Articulation of our perspective, experience, and ideas is
the human way of phenomenology.
Words are symbols to which man gives meaning as an outgrowth of his
civilization within his culture. Through words man attempts to
communicatively describe his experienced states of being-in-his-world.
In describing, of necessity, he relegates his uniquely known experiences
to already known word symbols or categories. Thus, the conceptualized
experience is limited, or less real than the lived unique experience.
So, while words prevent the loss of the wisdom of lived experience, they
are both a wonder of humanness and a limitation of humanness.
In describing human experiences there are efforts that can cut back this
limitation. If we truly wish to convey meaning to others, really want to
share what we have experienced in living, we will put forth the effort.
To put forth such effort requires going beyond "I must publish to
publish." It takes writing, structuring, rewriting, and restructuring
often to a point where for a period one comes to hate materials he once
held dear.
Through the years many of us come to use words as a means of passing a
course, or we view words as a mode for self-explosion, expression, and
self-understanding. In these ways they hold much purpose. The
requirement that words convey unique experiences of being to others
demands much more. This necessitates one selecting words that depict
one's perspective, his unique human angular view; or depict for another,
this particular man as he perceives and responds to his unique
experience. Such a depiction has to be unknown to the other; each one's
vantage point, given his history as an existent in this time and place,
is singular. Then it requires finding words and putting them {61}
together in a way that best conveys the meaning the nursing event had to
the nurse. An adequate dictionary and thesaurus can be useful.
The actual presentation of experience for an audience demands an
ordering of data in a sequence that will be sensibly logical for them.
We live experience in an order that flows from our being and history
within a multiplicity of calls and responses. Presently human expression
is limited to sequentiality. So again we see that the conceptualized
experience is different from and lacks the reality of the uniquely lived
event. Structuring a logical sequential presentation of data, deciding
on those aspects that influenced meaning, and having it conform as
closely as possible to the real is difficult.
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.
It is not loose performance that allows raw data to convey its message
to a nurse. New data are sucked easily and immediately into old, worn
out, known theoretical frames and networks of words. Severe
self-discipline enters into describing nursing experience with the vigor
of how it was lived. Too easily the description is let fall to mediocre
common forms. Proper grammar and plain English should suffice. This
would carry the nursing message, as jargon borrowed from other
disciplines in which the nurse always speaks as an alien, never will.
Humanistic nursing practice theory in asking for description does not
ask one to forget or deny known terms and knowledge. Rather it asks for
a bracketing or holding of this knowledge to the side. The nursing
experience should be given an opportunity to be seen in its pure form,
rather than forcing it to conform to foreign prestigious terms borrowed
from other areas of specialization, which beg the meaning of the nursing
event. Prior to dispersion, of course, one should weigh one's expression
in English against one's expression in one's known foreign jargon. Then
one will be open to choose how one wants to express and share the
meaning of her nursing world.
Phenomenology accepts categorization as a necessity of communicating. It
holds, nevertheless, that this is secondary to initial aware
experiencing. This study method acknowledges the unfathomable complexity
of existing and knowing. It strives for as adequate conceptualization of
the existential experience as possible. It honors the knowing person's
continued capacity for surprise and wonderment. Phenomenology asks us to
go beyond the common labels to the surprise of our own and other's
unique existences-in-the-world. A nurse who had been struggling over
many months with a family in their home, on the day she first
experienced an "I-Thou" relationship with them said, "It was as if I had
gone beyond the uncooperativeness and dirtiness of the situation."
Immediacy in labeling offers us the complacency and security of a
wrapped up problem. How could a nurse be held responsible for what
happened to a "dirty," "uncooperative" family. The many commonly heard
labels humans attribute inhumanely to others rarely relate to answers in
situations or to the dreadful human suffering problems generate.
Phenomenology seeks attestation of the meaning of a situation to a
participant. Positivism seeks general objective categories within the
universal. Phenomenology prizes differences, variations, and struggles
for their representation as parts of the whole. Rather than emphasize
the majority as holding sway, it recognizes that the unique contribution
can possibly be the weightiest in meaning. {63}