VISIONS in ANS

Each issue of ANS contains an article from the Society of Rogerian Scholars, named for the original journal of the Society – Visions. This section features scholarship of Rogerian Nursing Science. The current Visions article is titled “Through a Window: Finding Meaning in Unitary Appreciative Knowing,” authored by W. Richard Cowling III, RN, PhD, AHN-BC, SGAHN, ANEF,
FAAN; and Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN

Abstract:

The experience of a critical illness provided a pause in the life of one of the authors. Seeking to further understand this experience from a Rogerian perspective, the authors engaged in a mutual process of unitary appreciative nursing praxis. The process included 4 in-depth conversations with an ongoing back-and-forth conversation to both illuminate the critical illness experience as well as grounding it in the Science of Unitary Human Beings. A unitary appreciative rendering was the primary outcome with a letter, song, video, conference presentation, and scholarly manuscript. Other selected Rogerian perspectives that can be used to understand the illness experience are presented and briefly discussed.

Statements of Significance

What is known or assumed to be true about this topic?
The unitary appreciative knowing process has been used in the development of a praxis model as well as in a variety of research studies. The process enables the viewing of phenomena of central
concern through a unitary lens that often expands and deepens an understanding of an experience. The phenomena of transcending the wish to die to experiencing a strong will to live, and to live voraciously, are understudied in the nursing literature. Nurses’ firsthand accounts of patients experiencing unusual or unexplainable phenomena are often relegated to anecdotal accounts, not fully appreciating the significance and meaning of these experiences.

What this article adds:
This article applies the unitary appreciative knowing process to explore the experience of transcending the wish to die replaced with an extraordinary blossoming of a will to live. A consensual
qualitative approach is employed to examine the meaning of this experience from a unitary appreciative knowing perspective. This is the first article to represent and explicate the unitary
knowing process within the context of this type of transcendent experience leading to a unitary appreciative rendering of the experience, perceptions, and expressions associated with it. In addition, it offers the potential alternative unitary explications of the experience related to 4 associated theoretical niches.