Grounded theory is a systematic qualitative research method of data collection and analysis, ultimately leading to a theoretical explanation (a “grounded theory”) that is grounded in those data and that explains a phenomenon of interest. Widely used in nursing, grounded theory enables researchers to apply what they learn from interviewees to a wider client population. This book describes traditional and focused grounded theory, phases of research, and methodology from sample and setting to dissemination and follow-up. The grounded theory method was developed by Glaser and Strauss, in response to Blumer’s call for a method founded on concepts of symbolic interactionism, the social psychological theoretical framework that provides the guiding tenets of grounded theory methodology. Over the years, grounded theory has undergone an evolution of sorts. An alternate method of grounding data in qualitative research is dimensional analysis. Other scholars have developed variants of grounded theory, such as constructivist grounded theory and situational analysis. The book describes the extent to which nurse researchers have published grounded theory and presents an overview of the process of conducting a qualitative study using grounded theory as the method. Varied case studies range from promoting health for an overweight child to psychological adjustment of Chinese women with breast cancer to a study of nursing students’ experiences in the off-campus clinical setting, among many others. The book also discusses techniques whereby researchers can ensure high standards of rigor. Examples from published nursing research, with author commentary, help support new and experienced researchers in making decisions and facing challenges.

This book offers leadership lessons for aspiring nurse leaders from luminaries in business, medicine, philanthropy, government, academia, research, and health care. It offers practical advice, lessons learned, and testimonials as to how nurses can prepare themselves for leadership, which in turn, will help them to provide exceptional patient care. As per the report of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the heightened roles of the professional nurse allow nurses of all practices to more fully develop their leadership skills. Nurse leaders are moving the interprofessional collaboration agenda forward by serving in key leadership positions. A nurse leader who led public research in the Kent State University and Bowling Green State University challenged the common perception that successful leaders are born, complete with the requisite temperament and talents. Nurses who play leadership roles can fill in research on health care policy formulation and implementation that will change the course of health care payment, delivery, and quality. The book discusses nurse research leadership from an economist’s perspective, hiring leaders to understand leadership, and nursing leadership lessons from an association executive’s perspective, from a physician’s chief executive officer’s perspective, from a nursing friend’s perspective and from a collaborative team’s perspective. The book also highlights nursing leadership’s contributions to safety and quality, how leadership can usher in health reforms and achieve better health for all people, and advancing the cause of transformational nurse leadership.

This book presents a framework for nursing to build and, ultimately, sustain partnerships. Exemplar case studies written by nurses working in global health follow each chapter to illustrate specific elements of a strong partnership. The guiding principle for the book is that partnerships are paramount in creating sustainable outcomes. Varying degrees of partnership integration can include coordination, cooperation, and close collaboration. No matter their degree of partnership, nurses are ethically and morally obliged to be concerned with the world’s suffering. The book begins with a chapter which discusses types of existing partnerships and how nurses make the selection of an appropriate program to begin a partnership. Chapter 2 addresses how cultural perspectives, personal attributes, expectations, and knowledge of host country influence a volunteer nurse’s experience. In the third chapter, nursing roles in host country are addressed, community assessment as essential knowledge is highlighted. The importance of nursing licensure, mutual respect, and partnership is also dealt with. Chapter 4 presents examples of nurses’ experience with volunteers or partners, differences in the scope of practice between nursing partners, and the role of the nurse and nursing profession in host countries. This is followed by chapter which emphasizes the importance of resources, whether human, material, or financial, which are essential in developing a partnership. Two other chapters discuss important aspects of collaborative nursing research in international settings and explore the elements of sustainability to address the leadership required to maintain the partnership.

Phenomenology seeks to describe and articulate the fundamental structures of human experience just as this experience presents itself to and in and for experience. It can explore the logic of the whole gamut of human experience from the experience of looking at a work of art to the experience of falling in love with another person, from the experience of perceiving an object in space to the experience of fixing a broken piece of furniture. Phenomenology in nursing is concerned with the subjective, living person in her or his lived body in the experience of health and illness both nurse and patient. This book highlights some recent studies categorized according to focus, with special attention to those in which the study samples were patients or the general population, in which case they would be potential patients. It addresses a number of themes that emerged based on what the women shared about their experiences of being in the life in their narratives themes that emerged around why the women entered prostitution, what their first experience in it was like, why they stayed in it, and how they came to leave. Qualitative inquiry honors the subjective nature of reality, and the many meanings that may be inherent in a particular phenomenon or experience. The book includes stories from the methods of some studies conducted with 30 head and neck cancer (HNC) survivors. Personal reflections between a dissertation chair and a doctoral student who conducted a hermeneutic phenomenological study about the meaning of health among midlife Russian-speaking women, are reflected on. Finally, the book talks about the lessons learned from the field, and the challenges of intrafamily relations.

This book is a concise, step-by-step guide to conducting qualitative nursing research using various forms of data analysis. It encompasses different qualitative methodologies as content analysis, a means of organizing and interpreting data to elicit themes and concepts; discourse analysis, used to analyze language to understand social or historical context; narrative analysis, in which the researcher seeks to understand human experience through participant stories; and focus groups and case studies, used to understand the consensus of a group or the experience of an individual and his or her reaction to a difficult situation such as disease or trauma. Written by a noted qualitative research scholar and contributing experts, the book describes the philosophical basis for conducting research using data analysis and delivers an in-depth plan for applying its methodologies to a particular study, including appropriate methods, ethical considerations, and potential challenges. It presents practical strategies for solving problems related to the conduct of research using the various forms of data analysis and presents a rich array of case examples from published nursing research. These include author analyses to support readers in decision making regarding their own projects. The book embraces such varied topics as data security in qualitative research, the image of nursing in science fiction literature, the trajectory of research in several nursing studies throughout Africa, and many others. Focused on the needs of both novice researchers and specialists, it will be of value to health institution research divisions, in-service educators and students, and graduate nursing educators and students.

The intent of this book is to provide useful knowledge and practical applications to ease the work of leading or working in a hospital-based nursing research program. It contains principles that apply to all sizes of hospitals, as well as hospital systems that may be spread out over multiple states or be contained in one area. The book describes how nursing research provides new evidence for nursing practice that improves clinical outcomes, changes the culture of the organization, creates new leadership roles for nurses, offers opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, enhances patient safety, improves nurse and patient satisfaction, and leads to positive branding of the hospital and the nursing department. Nursing leadership can create (or support) a vision for nursing research based on the benefits that are central to the hospital’s strategic mission and goals. An essential element of setting the foundation and planning, growing, and nurturing a nursing research program is to demonstrate how the program aligns with the strategic plan (vision, mission, and goals) of nursing. The three foundational elements of strong nursing research programs personnel, intranet resources, and a nursing research department database are interconnected and should be available to the entire nursing department, including non-nurse providers and administrators, because important research questions can come from anyone on the team. The nursing research department database is an electronic system of input and storage of direct and indirect data important to the development, conduct, translation, and dissemination of nursing research.

This book merges the full spectrum of Caring Science evolution and identifies a clear path for future growth and development. It provides an opportunity to experience the delicate space of praxis, as the examples of a living philosophy are made accessible to the reader. The book through personal narrative, exemplars, and discourses on Caring Science, helps the reader to understand the history, accomplishments, and vision of human caring as a serious ethical, ontological, epistemological, practical endeavor. Its intent is to create a compendium of cutting-edge literature related to Caring Science to inform and transform nursing practice. The book comprises 50 chapters and is structured with 10 sections, each focused on a particular theme. Section I assumes that nursing knowledge is evolving towards a unitary-transformative worldview, and the ontology of Caring Science is embracing the tenets of this unitary worldview. Section II describes explicit connections between established programs or initiatives and Caring Science. Section III discuses Caritas science literacy. Section IV is on caritas literacy as a foundation for nursing education. Section V focuses on how scholarly inquiry advances the epistemology of Caring Science in the areas of leadership, research, and education. Section VI explores epistemology of research, aesthetic knowing (healing environments), and Caritas Praxis. Section VII integrates Caring Science grounded in Watson’s Theory of Human Caring and the 10 Caritas Processes into large complex healthcare systems. Section VIII reflects the process of Caring Science and cross-cultural (transcultural) ethical significance that is being developed in many parts of the world. Section IX focuses on advancing disciplinary-specific knowledge grounded in a relational unitary worldview within the context of Unitary Caring Science. The final section focuses on how Caring Science can become a journey of personal and professional transformation engaging in aesthetic ways of knowing.

Qualitative research has gained wide acceptance in nursing research. This book examines ethnography as a research design of particular relevance to nursing and provides specific information to guide graduate students or experienced nurses who are novices in the designs in conducting studies from the point of view of patients and their families. It reviews the philosophical basis for choosing ethnography as a research tool and describes in depth its key features and development level. The book provides directives on how to solve practical problems related to ethnography research, nursing examples, and discussion of the current state of the art. This includes a comprehensive plan for conducting studies and a discussion of appropriate measures, ethical considerations, and potential problems. It describes the meaning of health and well-being from the emic viewpoint of rural Nicaraguan men and talks about a study which explored health care providers’ perspectives regarding guideline compliance for rapid malaria testing in peripheral health facilities in Ghana. The book reviews the culture of the indigenous Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the application of Leininger’s transcultural nursing theory and describes a study, which examined childbirth in Fiji, compared the culturally specific methods used during childbirth to control pain and to reduce the risk of injury to the mother and the infant. It also deals with the needle exchange program to reduce the incidence rate of hepatitis and presents an ethnographic study done with a small group of poor and working-class Black American women who are sustained by their storefront church. The book also discusses other issues such as recovery of women from alcohol abuse, and personal privacy and interactional patterns in a nursing home.

This book is an excellent introduction to nursing at the master’s level. It addresses a gap in literature regarding nonadvanced practice nursing degrees. The book focuses on key roles in both direct and indirect care settings as identified by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). It provides a different perspective on the role of the nurse functioning within an interprofessional or interdisciplinary team, while providing tools that can be applied quickly. The book is organized into five sections comprising 16 chapters that can be extremely helpful to nurses moving toward the next level of their careers. Section one describes nursing history, nursing process, nursing theory selection, nursing research ethics, and clinical ethics and the role of the master’s-prepared nurse (MSN). Section two discusses the various roles of MSN such as clinical nurse leader, nurse educator, and advanced practice nurse. Section three presents the indirect care roles of MSN: public health nurse, informaticist, and nurse executive. Section four discusses MSN as change agent, AACN essentials, and Interprofessional collaboration. The final section focuses on special topics such as considerations for lifelong learning, self-care, and mentoring. The book could be introduced to students at the BSN level to help them make career choices as they move forward with their careers.

This book is unique in its contribution to the theory textbook literature with its goal of expanding nursing’s knowledge-generating capacity by engaging nurses in theory and knowledge development through their practice lenses. It presents philosophical, historical, practical, and theoretical perspectives regarding practice-centered knowledge development. The book is divided into fifteen chapters. The first chapter discusses nursing knowledge. In the second chapter, intermodernism is featured as a philosophy of nursing science and practice that synthesizes important tenets of other philosophical views. The third chapter discusses doctoral nursing roles in knowledge generation. Chapter four describes practitioner-centered research. Chapters five, seven, nine, twelve, and fourteen are presented as interludes where readers can pause and explore specific aspects of knowledge development in reference to their own nursing practice and research. The sixth chapter discusses knowledge translation in terms relevant to the doctor of nursing practice (DNP) project, and presents models along with specific guidelines for the DNP project process. Chapter eight talks about creating a nursing intervention out of a passion for theory and practice. The tenth chapter presents history and future possibilities of clinical scholarship. The goal of chapter eleven is to guide and encourage nurses to be knowledge generators by engaging in practice-based evidence research in settings where they may practice or teach, from point-of-care with patients to system level health care. Chapter thirteen presents a paradigm for the production of practice-based knowledge. The final chapter addresses ethical and epistemic considerations as rationales for the move to practice-based evidence research beyond traditional evidence-based practice procedures. The book is intended for graduate-level nursing students, particularly students enrolled in DNP and PhD programs, nurse practitioner students, and master’s level nursing students.