Canadian Journal of Nursing Research

Narrative Inquiry is a research methodology that enables a researcher to explore experience through a metaphorical analytic three-dimensional space where time, interaction of personal and social conditions, and place make up the dimensions for working with co-participant stories. This inquiry process, analysis, and interpretation involve a series of reflective cognitive movements that make possible the reformulations that take place in the research journey. In this article, I retell the process of my inquiry in moving from field texts (data sources) to research text (interpretation of experience) in Narrative Inquiry. I draw from an inquiry on how nurses experience living their values amidst organizational change to share how I as an inquirer/researcher, moved from field texts to narrative accounts; narrative resonant threads; composite letter as the narrative of experience; personal, practical, and social justifications to construct the research text and represent it another form as a poem. These phases in the inquiry involve considerations in the analytic and interpretive process that are essential in understanding how to conduct Narrative Inquiry. Lastly and unique to my inquiry, I share how a letter can be used as an analytic device in Narrative Inquiry.

We provided insights from older adults, their unpaid caregivers, and health-care professionals into specific roles for professionals within the health system to better meet the needs of community-dwelling older adults and their unpaid caregivers experiencing transitions between health services. We used a qualitative approach to collect data within one Canadian province from older adults and unpaid caregivers of older adults who participated in focus groups (n = 98) and professionals working in the health system who participated in an online survey (n = 52). Questions included experiences with health service transitions, strengths, challenges, and suggestions to improve transitions. Thematic analysis resulted in identifying seven specific roles for professionals in supporting health-care transitions: information and education, planning for future health needs, supporting the acceptance of necessary care, facilitating access to the right services at the right time, facilitating communication between services, facilitating the discharge planning process and advocacy for older adults and unpaid caregivers. Our results based on evidence from older adults, unpaid caregivers, and health-care professionals will inform future research and further development of the instrumental and relational roles for professionals supporting older adults and their caregivers experiencing health-care transitions.

This article overviews the second phase of a two-phase study which examined experiences of health and social exclusion among mothers experiencing homelessness in Ontario, Canada. A critical discourse analysis was employed to analyze the policy document, Realizing Our Potential: Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, 2014–2019. In nursing, analysis of policy is an emerging form of scholarship, one that draws attention to the macro levels influencing health and health promotion, such as the social determinants of health, and the policies that impact them. The clear neo-liberal underpinnings, within the strategy, with a focus on productivity and labor market participation leave little room for an understanding of poverty reduction from a human rights perspective. Further, gender-neutrality rendered the poverty experienced by women, and mothers, invisible. Notably, there were a lack of deadlines, target dates, and thorough action and evaluation plans. Such absence troubles whether poverty reduction is truly a priority for the government, and society as a whole.