Deborah McLeod | Dalhousie University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Deborah McLeod
Journal of Family Nursing, 2008
A serious illness often creates suffering and precipitates a search for spiritual meaning. The pu... more A serious illness often creates suffering and precipitates a search for spiritual meaning. The purpose of this hermeneutic inquiry was to explore the meaning of spirituality and spiritual care practices in family systems nursing. The videotapes of 12 therapeutic conversations with three families living with serious illness were the primary data for the inquiry. Findings suggest that suffering embodies an invitation to respond to the spiritual. Identified spiritual care practices included gathering stories of illness and faith, opening space to reinterpret experiences from a spiritual perspective, drawing on imagination and metaphor, and listening with an opening silence. The therapeutic work with one family is highlighted. This inquiry revealed that spiritual care requires literacy in reading the spiritual, a willingness to respond to the particular and the unpredictable, and a belief that good care demands a wise and thoughtful response to the suffering other.
Journal of Family Nursing, 2001
Nursing has a history of acknowledging the spiritual as a taken-for-granted dimension in health a... more Nursing has a history of acknowledging the spiritual as a taken-for-granted dimension in health and illness. However, nurses and other health professionals have struggled to find meaningful ways to attend to the spiritual in practice. This article explores the notion that to inquire about spirituality is not neutral and not inquiring is also not neutral. In addition, four clinical vignettes are presented that illustrate ways of opening space to the spiritual in family systems nursing, within the framework of the Illness Beliefs Model. These include opening space for the following: the gift of listening, curiosity and surprise, inviting reflections, and the invocation of metaphor. This article also addresses how some constraining beliefs of the clinician can actually inhibit or close the door to possible exploration of spiritual experience.
Journal of Family Nursing, 2008
A serious illness often creates suffering and precipitates a search for spiritual meaning. The pu... more A serious illness often creates suffering and precipitates a search for spiritual meaning. The purpose of this hermeneutic inquiry was to explore the meaning of spirituality and spiritual care practices in family systems nursing. The videotapes of 12 therapeutic conversations with three families living with serious illness were the primary data for the inquiry. Findings suggest that suffering embodies an invitation to respond to the spiritual. Identified spiritual care practices included gathering stories of illness and faith, opening space to reinterpret experiences from a spiritual perspective, drawing on imagination and metaphor, and listening with an opening silence. The therapeutic work with one family is highlighted. This inquiry revealed that spiritual care requires literacy in reading the spiritual, a willingness to respond to the particular and the unpredictable, and a belief that good care demands a wise and thoughtful response to the suffering other.
Journal of Family Nursing, 2001
Nursing has a history of acknowledging the spiritual as a taken-for-granted dimension in health a... more Nursing has a history of acknowledging the spiritual as a taken-for-granted dimension in health and illness. However, nurses and other health professionals have struggled to find meaningful ways to attend to the spiritual in practice. This article explores the notion that to inquire about spirituality is not neutral and not inquiring is also not neutral. In addition, four clinical vignettes are presented that illustrate ways of opening space to the spiritual in family systems nursing, within the framework of the Illness Beliefs Model. These include opening space for the following: the gift of listening, curiosity and surprise, inviting reflections, and the invocation of metaphor. This article also addresses how some constraining beliefs of the clinician can actually inhibit or close the door to possible exploration of spiritual experience.