Storytelling.
Storytelling can be therapeutic. For the person, it is both validating and valuing--as nothing else can do. There is a connection between old age and spirituality and a quest for transcendence--to express one's self as part of the human condition. This article seeks to describe the links among spirituality, nursing care, and patient/resident storytelling, and includes suggestions on how to help older adults tell their stories, even if they are cognitively challenged by memory and language loss. It describes a worldview as expressed in several of the new nursing theories as "humanness": a life cycle of continuous growth leading, perhaps, to "self-transcendence." Storytelling can be peacemaking and transformative. The voice of the "wounded storyteller" and how nurses can make that voice heard might be the takeaway message.
Mitty
Ethel
E
College of Nursing, New York University, USA.
D000368:Aged / Q000523:psychology*; D003142:Communication; D003704:Dementia / Q000451:nursing / Q000523:psychology; D005851:Geriatric Nursing / Q000379:methods*; D006808:Humanism; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008568:Memory; D033262:Narration; D024802:Nurse's Role / Q000523:psychology; D009742:Nursing Theory; D010687:Philosophy, Nursing; D029181:Spirituality