From providing care to thinking about health care, or the difficulty in putting nursing practice “into words”

Research
By Marie-André Vigil-Ripoche
English

My experience as a nurse and as a trainer led me to questions about nursing practices in terms of the Therapeutic Education of the Patient (TEP). Various studies, professional articles, and a report by the Ministry of Health have shown a gap between nurses’ optimal educational experiences and the reality of their practice within TEP—a very injunctive and prescriptive practice, whose ineffectiveness for therapeutic education is well known. In order to put experience into words, we must transform the events of the located action, and make its progress understandable. In this way, the action can become an object of reflection. We then move to the elaboration of cognitive schemas which account for the understanding of encountered situations and undertaken professional practices. This work of conceptualization allows for formalization, which help us transpose our experience to other situations and act professionally. Looking at this process of the experience elaborated by Le Boter, I try to show how nurses put their experience into words as part of TEP, and to discover where their difficulty with conceiving a more efficient educational approach lie. I rely on discussions with trainee nurses as part of a master’s thesis on nurses practicing TEP.

Keywords

  • nursing practice
  • experiential learning
  • competence
  • conceptualization
  • therapeutic aducation
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