title: Personal documents and nursing theory development.
abstract: Personal documents, notably autobiographical accounts, supply a compelling realm of phenomenological data for nursing theory, providing insight and understanding into the nonnormative nature of health and health-related experience. Personal documents occasion a discussion of empathic understanding as an analytical component of human science and illness as an occasion of heightened personal awareness. Triangulation research strategies are advocated as a means of incorporating personal experience data in nursing research.
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Ruffing-Rahal
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001325:Autobiographies as Topic; D004282:Documentation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009729:Nursing; D010361:Patients / Q000523:psychology; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D012107:Research Design