The Silence of Suffering

Abstract

Suffering is an inevitable reality that student nurses may be unprepared to witness. The 14-week college course, Understanding Suffering, was developed to help students better understand the suffering experience. Content for the course was drawn from nursing, sociological, and theological perspectives. Students scored significantly higher on a post-course evaluation of empathy and stated they felt better prepared to intervene in difficult clinical situations involving suffering. Course development, assignments, and evaluation are described in the article.

Using Lived Experiences of Adults to Understand Chronic Pain: Sickle Cell Disease, an Exemplar

“…Nurses are educated to use a holistic framework in practice (Adegbola, 2010), and should passionately champion a narrative inquiry to help patients to tell their stories in the clinical setting. Compassionate listening can be used both as an assessment technique as well as a modality for therapeutic intervention (Kazanowski, Perrin, Potter, & Sheehan, 2007). By listening compassionately, nurses give a “voice to often silent and suffering” (Quinlan-Colwell, 2009) individuals, demonstrate caring and help individuals relate their lived experiences (Adegbola, 2006; Adegbola, 2007; Adegbola, 2011b; Krupski et al, 2006).…”

“…Nurses continually interact closely with patients, and often observe and experience the suffering of those receiving care (Kazanowski et al, 2007). Stories told capture and enhance the emotive element and give a voice to lived experiences that are often lost in obtuse clinical records or sterile research designs.…”

“Walking in Their Shoes”: The effects of an immersive digital story intervention on empathy in nursing students

“…However, the evidence for the benefits of these programs is equivocal. Whereas some evidence demonstrates their effectiveness (Kazanowski et al, 2007;Ozcan et al, 2011), other studies shed doubt on their benefits (e.g. Beddoe & Murphy, 2004;Mete, 2007;Webster, 2010).…”