Talking about persons--thinking about patients: An ethnographic study in critical care

International Journal of Nursing Studies
Chris McLeanMary Gobbi

Abstract

Nursing involves caring for the 'whole person' and it is considered inappropriate for nurses to think or talk about patients in objectifying or dehumanising ways. Objectifying discourses can dominate within the arena of critical care, and critical care nurses can experience moral distress as they struggle to think about patients as persons. No previous study has examined the role played by 'impersonal' talk in the delivery of nursing care. This paper reports a study which examined the relationship between nursing practice and the way(s) in which critical care nurses think and talk about patients. The study objectives were to (1) identify and characterise the ways in which critical care nurses think and talk about patients; and (2) describe patterns of nursing practice associated with these different ways of thinking. An ethnographic study was undertaken within one critical care unit in the United Kingdom. Data were collected over 8 months through 92h of participant observation and 13 interviews. Seven critical care nurses participated in the study. Data analysis adopted the perspective of linguistic ethnography. Analysis of these data led to the identification of seven Discourses, each of which was characterised by a particular...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Apr 27, 2017·Nursing in Critical Care·Natalie Pattison, UNKNOWN Royal Marsden
Jan 13, 2018·Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing·C WilsonM Kar Ray
Aug 27, 2019·Journal of the Intensive Care Society·G A ColvilleL Perkins-Porras
Feb 18, 2020·Nursing Inquiry·Sherry Dahlke, Kathleen F Hunter
Nov 9, 2020·Nursing in Critical Care·Claire Minton, Lesley Batten
Jun 24, 2021·Revista brasileira de enfermagem·Emanuelle Caires Dias Araújo Nunes, Regina Szylit

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