O uso das narrativas como fonte de conhecimento em Enfermagem

Abstract

The narrative has been used by various researchers, as a form of privileged access to experience in nursing. However, when we take a more detailed look at this concept, we find its polysemic nature and the various dimensions in which it is mobilized: a way of thinking, a method of researching and of analyzing data, a cognitive and affective process. The wealth that it provides to the worlds that it allows to access, makes it an especially suitable tool for the study of nursing practice and its varied day-to-day, filled with great little stories that only the voice of the protagonists allows to uncover. We look for scientific evidence that these stories,
shared through narrative, don’t only allow access to lived experience, but in themselves produce meaning and knowledge, without which we can never understand the key aspects of the nature of nursing, both as a discipline and as profession. In this sense, the purpose of this systematic review is to uncover the state of the art on the significance of narrative in the construction of nursing knowledge from the lived experience of nurses. We included nine studies published between 2000 and 2010, retrieved from electronic databases, based on the narratives of nurses in order to access their lived experience in the context of care. The results
suggest that there is great diversity in the use of narratives and that this approach involves several dimensions, with the purpose of uncovering common sense and knowledge derived from experience. In the diversity of findings we encounter various types of knowledge about nursing, namely personal, aesthetic and ethic.