On Nursing Identity: What We Can Learn from African Nurses’ Oral Histories
By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor
Port of Mauritius by Iqbal Osman, via Flickr
“I have chosen this profession and nobody can take it away from me.”—Sophie Makwangwala, study participant
In the summer of 2009, at the International Council of Nurses (ICN) Quadrennial Congress in Durban, South Africa, a small group met to discuss collaborating on joint history projects. At that meeting, several African leaders of professional nursing associations reported that their expertise had long gone unrecognized. Seeking to have the stories of African nursing history told, they proposed interviews with other retired nurse leaders. Barbara Mann Wall, an American nurse researcher who was in the room that day, found herself intrigued.
The study. In keeping with Braun’s tenet that “indigenous research should be led, designed, controlled, and reported by indigenous people,” Wall first trained three of the African nurse leaders in the oral history method, aided by a grant from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Then the team embarked on the study reported on in this month’s original research CE, “ ‘I Am A Nurse’: Oral Histories of African Nurses.” Here’s an overview: […]