NURSES' DIRECTED EARLIEST MEMORIES, PREFERRED TREATMENT FOR SELF, AND RESPONSES TO CLIENTS IN SELECTED PRACTICE SITUATIONS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY (PAIN, DEATH, HANDICAP, NURSE-PATIENT RELATIONS, COMMUNICATION).
Contributors: University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Published: 1984
Number of pages: 197
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Personal examinations of childhood experiences and preferred treatment for self as modes of enhancing nurses' self understanding and therefore nursing care had been unstudied. This descriptive study was designed to identify and to ascertain if there was an association among nurses' directed earliest memories (DEMs) of physical pain, handicap, and death, preferred treatment for self, and responses to clients in identical practice situations; to generate grounded theory; and to ascertain construct validity.

The instrument was an investigator-devised, self-administered, open-ended and self-report questionnaire that had been pretested and pilot tested. Content validity and inter- and intra-rater reliability were established. Sixty-five randomly selected registered nurses employed at an urban southeastern university teaching hospital comprised the sample.

Qualitative analysis was used to determine categories of the phenomena under study. Content validity for the categories was established. Propositions concerning associations among the categories underpinned the grounded theory reflecting sustenance.

Quantitative analyses were used to ascertain construct validity. Alpha was set at .05. Statistically significant differences were found between nurses' DEMs of isolation and support and nurses' curing and caring responses; DEMs were associated with and were significant contributors to responses to clients in the physical pain and death situations. There was a significant difference between curing and caring treatment preferences for self and nurses' curing and caring responses; treatment preference for self was associated with and was a significant factor in explaining responses to clients with physical pain. Statistical significance existed neither for treatment preference for self and responses to dying or handicapped clients, nor for DEMs and responses to handicapped clients. Race was a significant contributor to nurses' responses to handicapped clients.

Conclusions are that categories emerged from the qualitative analysis that underpinned the new theory reflecting sustenance; nurses' responses to clients in death and physical pain situations were associated with DEMs; responses were also associated with preferred treatment for self in the physical pain situation; and preliminary construct validity concerning the instrument's adequate measurement of certain associations was established.

Recommendations include a further test of construct validity and hypothesis testing of the theory.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-02, Section: B, page: 0473.

Thesis (D.S.N.)--UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM, 1984.

School code: 0005.