Enhancing our Understanding of Emancipatory Nursing

Abstract

The aim of this analysis is to contribute to an understanding of emancipatory nursing in the context of higher education. Engagement with formative studies that used critical feminist methodologies led to my research focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) health in my academic research program. Dimensions of emancipatory nursing include reflexivity, transformative learning, interdisciplinarity, praxis, and situated privilege. Several critical feminist methodologies are addressed: feminist ethnography, community-based participatory action research (CBPAR), and comparative life history. Commonalities across methodologies illustrate the potential for emancipatory outcomes/goals.

A critical feminist discursive analysis of dynamics shaping abortion in Canada: Implications for nursing.

“…Together, this critical discourse analysis and Paynter et al (2019) can be read as openings towards more visible and emancipatory abortion advocacy by nurses (Begnell & Durey, 2014). It fits well within other calls for emancipatory nursing research practice and education (Kagan et al, 2010(Kagan et al, , 2014MacDonnell, 2014).…”

“…about abortion and implications for nursing? Looking at nondominant ways of knowing and drawing out underrepresented perspectives (Kagan et al, 2010), we looked at how challenging dominant gender norms can disrupt our assumptions and understanding of abortion (MacDonnell, 2014 (Deveau, 2017, p. 44).…”

Implicit Bias Toward Lesbian and Gay Persons Among Nursing Students: A Correlation Study

“…The nursing literature identifies the concepts of other (Claeys et al, 2021), openness (Della Pelle et al, 2018), conflict (Noone & Najjar, 2021), self-transformation (Penzias, 2016), and change (Lim & Hsu, 2016) as essential to providing appropriate, culturally responsive care to marginalized persons. Prior sexual minority nursing literature has incorporated various theories, including queer theory (Burton et al, 2021), feminist theory (MacDonnell, 2014), minority stress theory (Medina-Martínez et al, 2021), and cultural humility theory (Wright et al, 2021). These share concepts similar to CCT, but only minority stress theory specifically addresses conflict, taking an explanatory rather than a critical approach (Meyer, 2003).…”

Discourses with potential to disrupt traditional nursing education: Nursing teachers’ talk about norm‐critical competence

“…Before transformation can happen, the teachers must overcome certain difficulties. Most of them worked as nurses before they became nursing teachers, and nursing has traditionally rested on a noncritical and normative base, something that several researchers have highlighted (see, e.g., Allen, 2006;Falk-Rafael, 2005;Kellett & Fitton, 2016;Kirkevold, 2009;MacDonnell, 2014). Societal analyses of inequality, norms and power have not traditionally been part of nursing education curricula (Vickers, 2008), and the worldview of nursing has been narrower than is desirable when it comes to questions of student diversity and inclusion (Bleich et al, 2015).…”