Coming to know ourselves as community through a nursing partnership with adolescents convicted of murder.
This research applies Newman's hermeneutic-dialectic method of pattern recognition to the lives of 12 adolescent males convicted of murder who were invited to be co-investigators in the process of understanding patterns of meaningful relationships and experiences in their lives. Comparison of the 12 life patterns revealed a strikingly similar experience of interactions with the community and yielded insight into community pattern. The process of pattern recognition was found to be transformative. This article proposes a unitary-transformative process of community pattern recognition for nurses and communities interested in understanding complex community dynamics and engaging in healthy transformations.
Pharris
Margaret Dexheimer
MD
Nursing Department, College of Saint Catherine, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA.
D000293:Adolescent; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D005195:Family Relations; D006708:Homicide / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology*; D012189:Retrospective Studies