title: The role of experience, narrative, and community in skilled ethical comportment.
abstract: Two major types of narrative--constitutive or sustaining narratives and narratives of learning--are presented to illustrate the functions of narrative in everyday ethical expertise and socially embedded caring practices. Four narrative themes illustrate constitutive and sustaining narratives: healing and transcendence, the heroic saving of a life, fostering care and correction, and stories of being present. Five themes illustrate narratives of learning: the skill of involvement, being open to experience, disillusionment, facing death and suffering, and liberation. Quandary- and rights-based procedural ethics address ethical problems and breakdown and overlook everyday ethical comportment. Public storytelling is recommended as a way to explore notions of the good and ethical concerns.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiological Nursing, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Benner
mesh_terms: D001242:Assertiveness; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001293:Attitude to Death; D032764:Casuistry; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003463:Cues; D026689:Ethical Analysis; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D035863:Moral Development; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009726:Nurses / Q000523:psychology*; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D011368:Professional-Family Relations; D012380:Role; D012933:Social Identification