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
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Critical Incident Technique Utilization in Research on Holistic
Nurses
Submitted by
Leighsa Sharoff, EdD, RN, NPP, AHN-BC
Assistant Professor
City University of New York
Hunter College-Bellevue School of Nursing
425 East 25 th Street
New York, New York 10010
Acknowledgement:
The author would like to acknowledge the nurses who participated
in each of these studies used in this article.
Abstract
This article describes the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) as it
informs holistic nursing. The CIT is a qualitative, systematic, openended
technique for educing descriptive data from participants. It
is an effective naturalistic tool for focusing participants’ on a specific
event. The CIT is a user-friendly instrument that can foster
reflection and promote personal expression. Holistic nursing is a
personal and professional commitment to the healing process of self
and others. The competency of holistic nurses revolves around
their ability to incorporate the concepts and standards of the
philosophy of holistic nursing into their life and practice.
This article explores the use of the CIT in two separate studies on
holistic nurses. Both studies utilized the CIT as a secondary source
of data collection. All participants in both studies were members of
the American Holistic Nurses’ Association (AHNA). One study
explored how experienced certified holistic nurses (HNCs) learned to
become competent practitioners while the other study focused on
holistic nurses’ experience with modalities, the perceived benefits to
self and client.
Key Words: Critical Incident Technique, qualitative research,
story-telling, research methodology, descriptive data collection,
reflection, holistic nursing
INTRODUCTION
The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) has assisted qualitative
researchers’ to capture a retrospective story of an actual event in a
participants’ life. The CIT is a systematic, inductive, open-ended
procedure for eliciting verbal or written information from
participants (1: Norman, Redfern, Tomalin & Oliver, 1992). It is an
effective naturalistic tool for focusing participants’ on a specific
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