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Ellis-Kempner, Betsy

Nursing

2006

MS

While nurses incorporate technological advancements into practice, there exists a risk of sidelining how people experience illness (Cody, 2001; Sandelowski, 2002b). Focusing primarily on technology results in a way of seeing people and their bodies more as a mechanical objects than as an organic, experiencing persons. Since nursing embodies both humanistic and technological care, it is imperative to include both aspects of caring in the development of nursing knowledge (Silva, Sorrell, & Sorrell, 1995; Vande Zande, 1995; White, 1995;). As part of research, nurses make decisions that have far reaching influence on nursing knowledge and the profession of nursing. Therefore, by questioning the research process nurses influence the definition of nursing. Ways of examining the research process include data collection and the representation of findings. It also includes choosing to address types of nursing knowledge, such as empirical or aesthetic ways of knowing. In this study, I examined an aesthetic approach to data representation. The problem of how nurses represent data is worth exploring because it raises the phenomenological question "what is important to nursing knowledge?" Through the explicit use of phenomenology both as a method and a framework, this study was an exploration of the experience of dance as a form of data representation. The phenomenon was a dance representing the findings of a narrative illness about a woman with breast cancer. Study participants, comprising seven health care workers, observed the dance and participated in a focus group and interviews. The findings revealed the participants' experiences of dance performance as a way to present research. Using phenomenological methodology, the participants' experiences were transformed into a second dance about the experience of dance as a way to present data.