Cheung, Philip Leung (1991) Phenomenology of nursing. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Abstract
This project undertakes to investigate the existing practice of nursing in the United Kingdom using Edmund Husserl's phenomenology as a research approach. Since the work of Husserl is little known amongst nurse researchers in America and unknown in the United Kingdom, the methodological development in this dissertation constitutes a major and important aspect of the thesis. The research orientation developed by the researcher can be said to be innovative and original, at least in the area of nursing research, although the actual research technique might have been developed by phenomenologists in other disciplines. The study focusses particularly on the discrepancy between the theory and practice of nursing. The information gathered from various sources has been subjected to phenomenological reduction, so that problems associated with the existing practice of nursing are brought out into the open and interrograted by means of phenomenological intuiting. The technique of phenomenological analysis has been applied to some areas of nursing practice. The study reveals that there is a significant gap between what is practised and what ought to be practised in many hospitals and the conduct of nursing practice in the cases examined is irrationally based causing inestimable suffering on the part of patients and their relatives. The problems unearthed during the course of this investigation apply to general and psychiatric nursing. Although one is tempted to draw a hard and fast conclusion from this study, it is almost impossible to conclude in the phenomenological sense as the investigation remains open and unfinished, since phenomenology is an act of thinking, a method of infinite reflection which is assured, consolidated and experienced in its own accomplishment. One of the possible conclusions which can be drawn from this study is that nursing is an ego-centred activity, originating primarily from the nurse, the `I', the absolute `I' or the transcendental `I'. The concept of ego-centredness is applied both to the nurse and the patient as it requires the fusion of two transcendental egos during the act of caring. How this is achieved has implications for management and education.
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