Authenticity with myself, and this graduate student's ability for authenticity with herself allowed these patients' progress to occur. It allowed a realistic articulation in this student's phenomenological master's thesis of her lived nurse experience. From such articulation will a theory and scientific-artistic profession of nursing ever mold, flow, and form.
WORDS DISTINCTLY HUMAN: LIMITING, YET HUMANIZING
Through words we humanly share the meaning to us of our behavior, experience, and profession. Words attest to and endure. Thus, a professional history is possible, accrues, and has lasting duration. The study of the nursing event itself and its conceptualization as proposed in humanistic nursing practice theory is an application of phenomenology. Articulation of our perspective, experience, and ideas is the human way of phenomenology.
Words are symbols to which man gives meaning as an outgrowth of his civilization within his culture. Through words man attempts to communicatively describe his experienced states of being-in-his-world. In describing, of necessity, he relegates his uniquely known experiences to already known word symbols or categories. Thus, the conceptualized experience is limited, or less real than the lived unique experience. So, while words prevent the loss of the wisdom of lived experience, they are both a wonder of humanness and a limitation of humanness.
In describing human experiences there are efforts that can cut back this limitation. If we truly wish to convey meaning to others, really want to share what we have experienced in living, we will put forth the effort. To put forth such effort requires going beyond "I must publish to publish." It takes writing, structuring, rewriting, and restructuring often to a point where for a period one comes to hate materials he once held dear.
Through the years many of us come to use words as a means of passing a course, or we view words as a mode for self-explosion, expression, and self-understanding. In these ways they hold much purpose. The requirement that words convey unique experiences of being to others demands much more. This necessitates one selecting words that depict one's perspective, his unique human angular view; or depict for another, this particular man as he perceives and responds to his unique experience. Such a depiction has to be unknown to the other; each one's vantage point, given his history as an existent in this time and place, is singular. Then it requires finding words and putting them {61} together in a way that best conveys the meaning the nursing event had to the nurse. An adequate dictionary and thesaurus can be useful.
The actual presentation of experience for an audience demands an ordering of data in a sequence that will be sensibly logical for them. We live experience in an order that flows from our being and history within a multiplicity of calls and responses. Presently human expression is limited to sequentiality. So again we see that the conceptualized experience is different from and lacks the reality of the uniquely lived event. Structuring a logical sequential presentation of data, deciding on those aspects that influenced meaning, and having it conform as closely as possible to the real is difficult.
Often, when it seems that one has done his very best, it is wise to have a trusted other react to conceptualizations. Another's questions can bring to the conceptualizer's awareness thought connections that moved him along and that he has failed to convey. Also, such a reader can indicate aspects of thought trips the writer took that add nothing to the issue at stake and weaken his message. Too, another's response can make apparent to a writer the need to clarify meaning. This clarification may merely entail a better choice of words or phrases, or it may suggest the use of a meaningful metaphor, analogy, or parable.
These last imaginative forms of expression we frequently use meaningfully, sometimes like a shorthand, with our intimates. A phrase, metaphor, or analogy conveys with an immediacy the quality or spirit of an event. For example, a nurse working in a psychiatric hospital unit speaking of a patient said, "He came down the hall looking like an accident about to happen." A page of technical description could not have given me as much feeling for what she and the patient were experiencing at that moment. In nurses' efforts to express objectively, scientifically, and eruditely such modes of expression are often deleted from our written professional works. It is as if we enforce the rules of medical record charting of precision, conciseness, and use of "weasel" words onto all our written works to the detriment of a theoretical and professional enduring body of nursing knowledge being actualized. It takes considerable pain and endeavor to find egress from such human programming. With it we have purified, equalized, wearied, and dehumanized supreme experiences of human existence. And, we have negated the meaning and importance of ourselves and nursing. How often have you heard, "I am just a nurse"?
Phenomenology requires rigorous investment into respectfully, appreciatively, and acceptingly making evident our lived worlds and their ramifications for the now, the past, and the anticipated future. Nursing literature of this caliber would call and inspire those who attended it to further nursing practice and responsibly share the meaning they attribute to their area of specialized dedication.