A narrative approach to empirical nursing ethics research: uncovering the everyday moral knowledge of nurses

• Autor(a) principal: Peter,Elizabeth
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Outros Autores: Martin,Kirsten
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Texto & contexto enfermagem (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-07072007000400020
• topic: Methods; Ethics; Feminism; Nursing

In this paper we explore the use of Margaret Urban Walker's metaethical perspective, particularly the use of narratives, to inform the development of a research approach to uncover the everyday moral knowledge of nurses. A method based on Walker's work makes it possible to analyze the power dimensions inherent in nurses' moral experience, to ground a narrative approach to nursing ethics with a robust moral epistemology, and to differentiate different types of narratives. A number of analytic questions, which have their basis in Walker's work, are presented and are used to analyze a practice narrative written to illustrate how narratives can be used to draw out the moral knowledge of nurses within the context of their actual work.