Background: Junior nurses-who are most prone to errors and emotional distress as "second victims"-often experience underreported adverse events and psychological challenges. This study aimed to explore how junior nurses in China psychologically recover after adverse events and how they navigate their recovery experiences. Methods: Guided by Scott's Second Victim Recovery Trajectory Model, a qualitative study was conducted from September to November 2023. Purposive sampling was used to recruit junior nurses from hospitals across China who had experienced adverse events in their clinical practice. Informed by themes emerging from the initial nurse interviews, the study subsequently included nurse managers to provide additional organizational and managerial perspectives. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine junior nurses and four managers. Data were analyzed thematically within a narrative inquiry framework and reported following the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). Results: Two main themes emerged: (1) the trajectory of adverse events: A nonlinear psychological response, and (2) final outcomes of adverse events: reflection and adjustment. Psychological recovery broadly followed the Second Victim Recovery Trajectory, with only two outcomes observed-dropout and thriving. Organizational support sometimes enabled nurses to bypass certain recovery stages, but such support was limited. Conclusions: Junior nurses experience notable emotional distress following adverse events. The post-event recovery is strengthened by supportive interpersonal environments but limited by insufficient organizational attention. The study findings highlight the need to foster a just, blame-free culture to promote recovery.
This Special Issue aims to advance critical qualitative inquiry in China studies and contribute to a vibrant, inclusive global community. It builds upon debates and efforts in the behavioral and social sciences among area specialists in two eras: researchers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the diaspora in the 1980s who sought to sinologize behavioral and social sciences, and sociologists in China in the 2000s who are seeking to indigenize these fields. The Issue takes a two-pronged approach toward advancing critical reflection in knowledge production: (a) it aspires to diminish the current influence of Western and positivistic paradigms on behavioral and social sciences research; (b) it seeks to challenge discursive hegemonic influences to create and sustain space for critical qualitative inquiry. The Issue traverses disciplinary boundaries between history and behavioral and social sciences within China Studies. It opens dialogue with the non-area specialists who are the primary audience of the Qualitative Inquiry.
Health systems must rapidly move knowledge into practice to address disparities impacting sexual and gender minority (SGM) patients. This qualitative study explores barriers and facilitators that arose during an initiative to improve care for SGM patients in federally qualified health centres (FQHCs) from the perspectives of FQHC staff. Cross-sectional qualitative content analysis, using a general inductive approach, of secondary data from transcripts of intervention events offered to FQHC staff and semistructured interviews with staff and FQHC leadership during the intervention. 10 FQHCs from nine states in the USA. FQHC quality improvement (QI) and clinical care staff, and leaders at each FQHC. The transforming care for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people QI initiative combined two evidence-based programmes, Learning Collaborative (LC) and Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO), to assist primary care health centres in developing capacity to identify SGM patients, monitor their health and care, and improve disparities. The primary outcome was identification of barriers and facilitators to implementing initiatives to improve care for SGM patients. The secondary outcome was clarification of how intervention participants used Project ECHO sessions versus LC meetings to obtain information that influenced implementation of the initiative at their FQHC. Barriers and facilitators mapped to two major themes: 'Clinical' (patients' health, wellness, and available treatment) and Health Systems and Institutional Culture (FQHC operations, and customs and social institutions within the FQHCs and in the external environment). Common 'Clinical' inquiries were for assistance with behavioural health, pre-exposure prophylaxis and transgender hormone therapy. Prevalent facilitators included workflow change and staff training, while adapting electronic health records for data collection, decision support and data extraction was the most prevalent barrier. Project ECHO and LC provided complimentary forums to explore clinical and operational changes needed to improve care for SGM at FQHCs.
Narrative inquiry is often represented by using fragments of field texts. Drawing on a 4-year study alongside refugee families from Syria, we show the importance of acknowledging the multiple and nested contexts within which field texts are situated. We illustrate how each moment is reflective of being in the midst-of social, institutional, and cultural narratives, formula stories, multiple relationships, domestic details, and silences. Attending to living in the midst allows us to contemplate perplexities amid a plurality of experiences that are embedded and understood as part of living within unfolding lives and relationships.
This article explores how disability studies can take shape as an interpretive method and how disability-perception can influence this. My exploration is organized in relation to the following question: In what ways might attention to dyslexia as an interpretive act inflect social inquiry? I treat interpretive methods as a form of inquiry that attends to the social activity of interpretation itself and I regard dyslexia as part of such activity. A key issue for such inquiry is how to methodically engage appearances as an interpretive encounter: That is, how can we make the taken-for-granted activity of perception as interpretation available for reflection and keep the subject ∞ object chiasma* relation a primary focus? Disability studies is a starting point for such inquiry in at least two ways: (a) it brings to attention the ways in which people interpret disability and (b) it considers how impairment experience itself is an interpretive modality that can momentarily disrupt the normative flow of common-sense, revealing aspects of the act of interpretation, and making it available for reflection. This article will show how the perception of disability as well as disability-perception can be regarded as enacting a "pause" in the everyday flow of common-sense and, thereby, encounter interpretive acts as an occasion for further inquiry. I turn to descriptions of perceptions and experiences of dyslexia as interpretive scenes where the normative order of ordinary interpretation can be revealed. I address various ways that dyslexia is described as a disruption to the normative order of language, especially the written word, print-language, even as the term dyslexia is used as a sense-making-device to reassert the primacy of normative expectations and values in literate-culture. As a sense-making-device imposed from without or as experience that seems to come from within, or as both, the appearance of "dyslexia" serves as a primal scene for uncovering the ways in which the social order of interpretation works. *Chiasma is not a dyslexic rendering of "chasm." Instead, chiasma refers to the crosswise relation between concepts and structures that rely on each other for their meaning, for example, reading and readers; subject and object.
The purpose of this article is to discuss and make clear the methodological commitments of co-composing and negotiating narrative accounts in narrative inquiry. The negotiation of interim texts is a widely used practice across a range of methodologies and paradigms (i.e., member checking, member validation, member reflections, and narrative accounting), yet there is little discussion on the varied philosophical underpinnings that shape the meaning and purpose of negotiating interim texts with participants. By drawing on the authors experiences of negotiating narrative accounts across projects this article will clarify the relational commitments that underpin this aspect of narrative inquiry as a move toward mutuality, co-composition, friendship, and ongoing attentiveness ordinary lived experience.
In this article, we develop, through drawing forward fragments of our experiences, a concept of reciprocity as always situated within the relational ontology of narrative inquiry. Reciprocity is most commonly understood within a transactional sense, an exchange of goods. We show important aspects of reciprocity in narrative inquiry, including the importance of intentionally creating and responding to spaces where reciprocity occurs and can be sustained over time and place, and the potential reciprocity holds to change who we, and those with whom we work, are. As we reconsider the ways in which reciprocity is not understood as a transaction in a relational methodology, new questions about the entanglement of reciprocity and recognition emerge. We understand that recognition does not necessarily have to be reciprocal, but recognition is necessary to compose a space where reciprocity can live in our ordinary interactions with others.
Recent research, which explored the use of Quality Improvement (QI) methods in the Covid-19 pandemic response, found that Quality Improvement principles were utilised during the crisis management period, albeit without direct intention. Following on from this work, the aim of this paper extends that study by investigating the sustainability and resilience of not only the changes implemented by healthcare staff during Covid-19 in Ireland, but the resilience of the wellbeing of healthcare staff themselves through the various waves of Covid-19. To explore healthcare staffs experience of Quality Improvement and the sustainability and resilience of both Quality Improvement initiatives and healthcare staff, a qualitative design was implemented. Semi-structured interviews took place online over Zoom with 11 healthcare staff members from the Irish healthcare service in the Spring of 2022. An analysis of the narratives was conducted using thematic analysis supported by NVivo12. Four key themes were evident from the data: (i) From fear to exhaustion; (ii) maintaining person-centred approaches to care; (iii) Covid-19 as a medium for change, and; (iv) staff resilience and appetite for Quality Improvement. The results of this work identified three key learnings; (i) integrating learning into policies and practice: (ii) the role of collective leadership and devolving/sharing power; and (iii) key drivers/factors that promote sustainability of QI interventions. Despite the challenges in recruitment of research participants experienced during the pandemic, a narrative approach supported the collation of rich and nuanced insights into the experiences of healthcare staff during this time. A growing body of literature currently exists on how healthcare staff felt during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, as the waves of Covid-19 have declined, it is vital to examine how the feelings of burnout and disillusionment will affect engagement with Quality Improvement in the future. It is also worth noting and examining the feeling of purpose and pride participants expressed from working through the Covid-19 pandemic. This study has helped to address this gap.
This article analyzes feminist praxis and nongovernmental organization (NGO) activism in the Heyang Project, which endeavored to increase women's political participation in rural governance through village elections in Shaanxi Province, China (2004-2013). It presents an NGO-centered framework to challenge the Western and state-centered lenses that have been used to frame and assess the development of NGOs, civil society, and the women's movement in China. I disrupt the exclusive power upheld by the researcher by inserting the interpretative voices of the researched. I demonstrate that the Project transcends the predicament of a binary conceptualization. The NGO successfully interweaves and juxtaposes seemly contradictory forces.
Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests are becoming an increasingly common method of qualitative inquiry, particularly for critical criminologists in Canada who face barriers in accessing Canadian prisons to conduct research. This article explores the politics of institutional gatekeeping and highlights the ongoing policing of critical criminological knowledge, necessitating the use of ATIP as a data collection method. Two case studies describe the strategies that the authors mobilized to acquire records from the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) when their applications to conduct research inside prisons were denied. The authors argue that while access to information legislation is promoted as allowing for increased accountability and transparency of the government, real transparency is a public myth. This lack of transparency is linked to the ascendancy of administrative criminology in Canada, which ultimately devalues critical research and inhibits information flows in and out of carceral spaces.
In this article, we reflect on the preparatory phase of a multispecies research project focused on dog-human care relationships. Playing with creative posthumanist methodologies that seek to decenter the human, we attached light-weight videorecording devices to our companion animals' collars. As we approach a dogs-eye view of our everyday lives and interactions, we think with Jacques Derrida to ask: What does it mean to respond when met with the animal's gaze? Through unsettling our gaze, the videos take us somewhere else entirely, raising another question: What do attempts to tangibly and imaginatively see with the dog do? The unsettling of our own reflections-on the question of the animal and the gaze of the "Other"-offers a space for enacting Haraway's conception of response-ability, for moving with our impetus to respond despite our current situated involvement in neoliberalism and settler colonialism with their commodification and domestication of more-than-human life.
This paper traces intersectionality's theoretical-methodological "twists and turns" to reconsider its explanatory power in elucidating relations between selves and socialites and its application in research. Questions of how researchers take up the heuristic have become charged given intersectionality's uptake by democratic institutions as a marker of excellence alongside critiques of its appropriation by systems advancing it. Adopting a processual-relational framing, we argue that difference represents a site of possibility-affirming life's heterogeneity-and danger, exposing the unboundedness of monolithic identities upon which intersectional theorizing relies through misfitting/fracturing. This reveals intersectionality's potential as infrastructure. Using an "infrastructural inversion" that makes the hidden work of intersectionality-as-infrastructure perceptible, we demonstrate how an infrastructural critique uncovers the socio-material implications of classification systems underpinning intersectionality. We approach research matrices as "wild containers" illuminating nondominant differences, suggesting this enables a decolonized understanding of intersectionality as inter-/intra-sectional becomings moving beyond hierarchical categorizations imposed by white supremacist thought.
Adverse events during hospitalization remain a widespread global issue, with studies consistently highlighting significant variation in incidence and severity across countries and healthcare settings, particularly among frontline nursing staff. The purpose of this study is to examine junior nurses’ perceptions of adverse events and how they attribute their causes. The findings emphasize the importance of understanding how junior nurses differentiate reportable incidents from acceptable deviations in clinical practice. A qualitative narrative inquiry was conducted with nine junior registered nurses from various regions in China who had experienced adverse events, recruited through purposive sampling. In-depth, semi-structured online interviews were conducted, focusing on participants’ personal experiences with adverse events, their interpretations of adverse event definitions, and perceived causes. Additionally, four nurse managers were interviewed to provide supplementary perspectives. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Two main themes emerged —“It is not an adverse event” and “It is bound to happen,” each encompassing several sub-themes. Junior nurses did not strictly adhere to the formal hospital definitions of adverse events. Their personal classification of an incident as an adverse event depended mainly on the actual harm caused to the patient and the perceived preventability of the incident. Many minor errors or near misses were not considered adverse events if no harm occurred. The second theme reflected a sense of inevitability: participants attributed adverse events largely to system-level factors such as workload, staffing shortages, faulty equipment, or management deficiencies. In contrast, nurse managers fully endorsed official definitions and primarily attributed adverse events to individual nurses’ mistakes, viewing most incidents as preventable with appropriate care. These findings highlight the need for open dialogue between junior nurses and managers to bridge differing perspectives, enhanced education on adverse event definitions, and a supportive patient safety culture that addresses systemic issues while fostering transparent reporting. Policies should recognize their frontline insights as valuable complements to managerial perspectives, ensuring a shared understanding that strengthens reporting practices and improves patient safety. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-025-04158-7.
This paper presents a study examining how pre-service teachers understand and experience the limit(s) of classroom creativity in a Canadian higher education class. Participants first completed a modified version of the Harris Creativity Audit to assess their preliminary understandings of creativity policies and practices, as well as perceptions of the value and feasibility of incorporating creativity into their own teaching. The survey results informed the content of a two-part workshop where participants utilized participatory design and sketch modeling to further explore their understanding of classroom creativity. Data analysis resulted in three themes: (a) the impact of physical space; (b) assessing creativity and assessing in creative ways; (c) challenging the educational system. This study is part of a multisite Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded project that aims to explore creativity in higher education to empower educators and students to develop creative agency through creative ecologies and collaborative assessment.
Qualitative interview styles have been guided by precedent within academic disciplines. The nature of information sought, and the role of interviewer and interviewee are key determinants across styles, which range from doxastic (focused on understanding interviewees' experiences or behaviors) to epistemic (focused on co-constructing knowledge). In this article, we position common interview styles along a doxastic-epistemic continuum, and according to the role of the interviewee (from respondent to equal partner). Through our typology and critique of interview styles, we enhance epistemic interviewing by introducing "deliberative interviews," which are more debate oriented and closer to equality in the interviewee and interviewer relationship than existing interview styles. Deliberative interviews require a comprehensive, pre-interview briefing on the subject matter followed by interactive deliberation wherein complex issues are debated across viewpoints in an effort to devise solutions. The effectiveness of this interview style in generating new knowledge warrants empirical testing across academic disciplines.
This article explores the micro- and macro-level implications of the dual global pandemics of COVID-19 and racism through a narrative structure based on Barad's discussion of "timehops." Weaving personal, national, and international stories, the article explores qualitative research's responsibility and potential to offer new ways to respond to the entanglements of people, places, moments, materials, and these pandemics.
Continuing professional development (CPD) is a key aspect to fulfil a commitment to lifelong learning for professionals registered with the Medical and Dental Council, the intention being to promote the health of patients and develop clinical expertise. The absence of formal CPD requirements for practitioners in Eswatini has resulted in a move to introduce an accredited system. The qualitative study followed a participatory action research (PAR) methodology using a cooperative inquiry group of 10 medical practitioners in Eswatini to investigate how the current CPD program could be improved and formalised. PAR entailed four stages; observation, reflection, planning and action, using a semi-structured format to explore the areas of concern. Reflecting on the current situation resulted in three ways to improve CPD being identified: (1) adopt a formal, compulsory CPD model; (2) recognise achievements by practitioners who endeavour to improve their skills/knowledge through Entrustable Professional Activities, and (3) ensure that CPD is relevant to the workplace by using Quality-Improvement CPD (QI-CPD) and reflective diaries. These would be done by involving local practitioners, using adult learning principles and ensuring continuous evaluation and improvement of the CPD model. There was general agreement on the need for a formalised CPD system to improve skill levels and provide an open platform to enhance patient care in a resource constrained setting. The findings provided information that can be used to plan and action its implementation through engagement with the country's doctors in various forums and through ongoing research.
In this article, we reflect on our teaching practices that include the development of an artist-in-residency program in one teacher education course and one graduate course in the Fall of 2022 at The University of British Columbia. During these residencies, Carrier Wit'at artist and printmaker Whess Harman and Indigenous scholar and a/r/tographer Jocelyne Robinson of the Algonquin Timiskaming First Nation demonstrate through their art practices how love and land are central tenets to relational ethics. We engage with Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua's theory in the flesh alongside the artists-in-residencies as we consider an anti-colonial future in art education. We propose the concept of relational ethics through the flesh as a reflexive, embodied, social justice-oriented way of being in the world.
The rhythmic interplay of accent, tempo, and musical mood is expressed in the bodily postures, gestures, and expressions of attuned responsiveness in Salsa Dura, a genre of salsa music from the 1970s featuring improvisational dance solos. These dancers embrace the feelings and flows of soloing musicians going off and breaking free from any predictable form and structure. We inquire into how world-class salsa dancers and educators feel themselves moved by such intricate rhythms to experience soul connections. Video recordings and interviews yield insight into the call and response dynamics of this essentially tactful practice of alterity.
In this Editorial, we discuss WalkingLab's approach to critical walking methodologies grounded in queer-feminist, anti-racist praxis, and argue for the need to critically account for understandings of place in times of ongoing crises. We then introduce the articles featured in this special issue. Authored by international scholars, each article in the special issue engages critically with walking methodologies and the concept place from oblique angles.