Knowing nursing - The challenge of articulating knowing in practice

Learning and teaching in the clinical environment is complex and challenging. Development of the ability to articulate knowing in practice is essential to allow exploration of the richness and complexity of this type of nursing knowledge. This paper describes an innovative approach developed in collaboration with practitioners to assist in revealing hitherto hidden aspects of knowing nursing. The interpretive paradigm provides one means of voicing nursing knowledge, specifically by accessing the lived-experience of nursing. The approach is qualitatively different to reflection and critical incident as it focuses on the taken-for-granted rather than being problem based or problem solving. Hermeneutic phenomenology and constructivism are combined in an innovative model that allows experience to be captured and meaning to be explored, thereby providing a means to articulate knowing in practice. Practitioners involved in operationalising this model considered that it allowed them to articulate a level of practice knowledge which they had previously experienced difficulty in accessing. This approach to knowledge articulation may therefore be useful in assisting to widen the horizon of nursing knowledge.