Can nurses better understand their patients? If a nurse has never had cancer, how does she know what her patient is experiencing? If a nurse has never had major surgery, how can he relate to his patient’s fear? Without common ground, does a nurse have any hope of truly understanding how patients feel?

A new book, Interpretive Phenomenology in Health Care Research, published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International, offers insights into how a person within a given context makes sense of a phenomenon or major life event. The authors’ research reveals intimate details about the ways people cope with health, illness, injury, birth, suffering and dying. The authors are Garrett K. Chan, PhD, RN, FAEN, FPCN; Karen A. Brykczynski, DNSc, RN, FAANP, FAAN; Ruth E. Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN; and Patricia Benner, PhD, RN, FAAN. Benner, author of the landmark From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice (1984), has authored more than 45 books on clinical knowledge and using interpretive phenomenology to help develop excellence in clinical nursing practice.

Human beings have struggled to be understood since before “Know Thyself” was inscribed at the ancient Greek temple of Apollo at Delphi. We can share our thoughts verbally, but philosophers such as Martin Heidegger have argued that all description is interpretive―the speaker chooses certain words and not others, while the listener hears those words within his or her own realm of experience.

Lisa Day, PhD, RN, CNS, clinical nurse specialist at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, has reviewed the book and observes: “Anyone who thinks science is alienating and disconnected from human life will appreciate the … picture this book offers. And anyone who thinks rational empiricism has the whole story will have his or her eyes opened to what is missing.” RNL

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