Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
The subjective experience of participants must be privileged in
order to understand the meaning and purpose they ascribe to their
own life events. Contexts must be acknowledged. Rich, thick
descriptions must be conferred with legitimacy to overcome the
limitations of traditional empirical methodologies. Such approaches
will fall into the qualitative paradigm. This results in “an ‘emic’
perspective and necessarily employs an inductive process of
analysis requiring interpretation of data” (Hollis, Openshaw and
Goble, 2002, p 3)
Molineux (2005) outlines the advantages of using qualitative
research methods as facilitating “contextualised exploration”,
placing a high value on subjectivity, appreciating meaning,
acknowledging the researcher’s presence and the creation of rich
descriptions that expand rather than contract understanding of the
phenomena under investigation (p 102 – 103).
Meanings ascribed by individuals to sickness and recovery can exert
profound influence on the recovery process. Through facilitation of
opportunities for patients to ‘give voice’ to their experiences in their
own words, dramatic insight can be gained into their perceptions,
understandings and struggles in the healthcare experience.
Narrative methods permit access to this veiled world of individual
embodied experience. Here, we begin to understand the unique
personal meanings of health events in a way that can enhance and
individualise practice.
Narrative
Biographical/narrative methods are particularly suitable as a means
of capturing unique insights into the individual, subjective process
of ‘making sense’ of the things that happen in each individual’s life.
People understand their daily experiences through narrative where
selective elements of personal history are construed into meaningful
structures or plots (Polkinghorne, 1988). Jonsson, Josephsson and
Kielhofner (2000) propose that “narrative theory is a useful
theoretical structure for understanding occupational life” (p 425).
Wicks and Whiteford (2003) explore this issue, promoting a
narrative approach to occupational research for several reasons.
Narrrative approaches are compatible with the humanistic
foundations of the occupational therapy profession. They identify
strong links between occupation and stories, calling for occupational
therapy research to be “occupation-based” and incorporating “the
use of stories” (p 87). The placement of our stories in time and
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