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
event. This technique enables researchers to capture the reality of
contemporary nursing practice, and nurses’ experience of that
practice (2: Keatinge, 2002). This inductive approach allows for
‘freedom of expression’ with a reference framed by the research
question (3: Cox, Bergen, Normal, 1993). It is a “brief written or
spoken depictions of vividly remembered events” (4: Brookfield,
1990a, p. 84).
This paper will describe the CIT as it informs holistic nursing.
Following a brief description of the CIT and holistic nursing, a
discussion on the inclusion of the CIT in two separate studies on
holistic nurses will conclude this article.
It is the intended meaning of the participant that the
researcher hopes to glean from the CIT. Understanding that
meaning, and being able to adequately articulate it is the
researcher’s goal and intention. The CIT is a route for the
participant, if they wish to, to make meaning of their experience.
To make meaning of one’s experience refers to understanding the
meaning behind the experience, to make an interpretation of it (4).
The premise is twofold: the participant might gain a deeper
understanding of the event and own its’ meaning while the
researcher attempts to make meaning and an interpretation based
on the participants’ singular story.
CRITICAL INCIDENT TECHNIQUE
The critical incident technique was originally developed by Flanagan
and members of the Aviation Psychology Team during World War II
(5: Mezirow, 2000). In his seminal work, Flanagan detailed how he
and others first utilized this method to identify critical incidents of
pilots. Flanagan describes the CIT as a flexible set of procedures for
“collecting direct observations of human behavior in such a way as
to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems”
(6: Flanangan, 1954, pg. 327). To be critical, Flanagan states that
an “incident must occur as a situation where the purpose or intent
of the act seems fairly clear to the observer and where its
consequences are sufficiently definite to leave little doubt
concerning its effects (6, p. 327). By the term incident, Flanagan
refers to “any observable human activity that is sufficiently
complete in itself to permit inferences and predictions to be made
about the person performing the act” (6: p. 327). He developed a
feasible and proficient method of rigorous interviewing aimed at
specifying facts and identifying critical behaviors. The basic
principles of the CIT are that factual reports of behavior are
preferable to general opinions and impressions and only those
behaviors that make a significant contribution to the general aim of
the study should be considered (7: Woosley, 1986).
There is a two-fold assumption behind this technique (1).
First, observers make references about the person’s competence on
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