Nurses' Experience of Workplace Violence Before and After a Focusing Workshop

• Author / Creator

  Marie Sherry McDonald

• This hermeneutic study of workplace violence demonstrated that trauma, as a result of intercollegial violence, can be processed. Focusing can be applied as an intervention for intercollegial violence in nursing practice environments, which opens up possibilities of engagement with the universal condition of suffering. Suffering, within the context of the thesis project, exists when a nurse experiences trauma and incurs a wound, consciously or unconsciously dealt or received, through an abusive interaction with a colleague. Focusing may be explained as a self-exploration and self-reflection based on listening to the body’s wisdom (Gendlin, 2007; Madison, 2001). The key discovery in Focusing’s evidence-based research is that a person’s ability to affect change depends on how closely he/she attends to his/her experiencing. For the purpose of this study, five themes were identified and explored: workplace violence, poor healthcare (its effect on an individual’s stress level), resilience (an individual’s ability to rebound), embodied spirituality (in relation to an individual’s sense of health and wholeness), and embodied caring (the human’s connection to the complex life force of environment, Self/body). Because of metaphor’s usefulness in qualitative research (closer to “story” than statistics), metaphoric elements were explored during the Pre-and Post-Focusing workshop interview stages of the study. Implications for the co-researchers, the practice of the researcher, the healthcare system, the Focusing, counselling, and psychology communities were identified.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Focusing
  • Nursing
  • Intercollegial violence

• Graduation date

  2012

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Psychotherapy and Spirituality

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3PR7N79N

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.