NURSING AS CREATION OF THEATER: IMPROVISING WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH CARE.
Contributors: University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 158
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Mental Health.; Women's Studies.
Description: Women hospitalized for the treatment of mental health problems in public hospitals with male patients may require nursing care that deeply respects woman-centered experience. This care can model a journey of transformation that moves the nurse and the women beyond some of the borders/barriers of their past experiences.

This investigation is rooted in the creative personality of the nurse scholar. It develops the metaphor of women's healing as theater/play. The nurse in the role of director/choreographer creates a manner of listening to the individual woman patient's story as if she were critiquing her part in a play. The investigation applies radical feminist philosopher Mary Daly's images of a woman's breakthrough into personal freedom as a "Metapatriarchal Journey". It expands nurse ethicist Sally Gadow's image of the nurse as explorer, traveling with the person seeking care in the "uncharted land" of her experience.

This work attempts to apply a feminist esthetic to nursing women in acute care mental health settings. It focuses on transforming into theater the work involved in both the nursing care on the hospital unit and the writing of the dissertation. The power of women's energy shifts consciousness, using imagination to free the nurse from some traditional barriers of the patriarchal medical/psychiatric system.

Three women patients are presented in their own experience within the theater metaphor that portrays them rehearsing different roles in a play that might be called "Healing on the Metapatriarchal Journey". The often brutal reality of the mental health crises in their lives is presented in contrasts as a combination of medical and demographic data from hospital records and scenes of audiotaped conversations with the nurse written as play script. She uses her creativity as the key intervention in directing a journey of mutual healing.

Applications to in-patient care include in-service for nurses and patients on the oppression of traditional female socialization and creative efforts to help the woman patient rediscover her own voice. Applications to nursing education include helping students use imagination and creative writing to hear and value the integrity of the woman's story.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-04, Section: B, page: 1891.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER, 1993.

School code: 0831.