Baring one’s soul in narrative health research: the enculturation of a health care professional in an island population

Abstract

Autoethnography demands a high degree of self-reflection and openness about one’s own life that is both disconcerting and necessary. Therefore, the presentation of self becomes necessary to inform the reader about the author’s positionality in research, but without overextending its scope to the extraneous or sensitive. The utility of the narrative form in autoethnography is discussed in this paper revolving around four short stories including: 1. Starting Points, 2. Arrival, 3. Transition to Care Work and Nursing, and 4.
Professional Initiation. These auto-narratives are part of a wider study into the enculturation of a health care professional in an island population. These progressive and linked accounts are counterpointed with metanarrative as reflexive explanation of how autoethnography has been deployed as research method. Our paper highlights the potential contribution of autoethnography and narrative research to health practitioners working in socio-cultural and clinical settings. The field in this research is the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of the United Kingdom. Key themes related to this location include its geographical position (i.e. its relative isolation to the mainland), and its role as a social-demographic outlier as foretaste of the future population that the National Health Service will serve (i.e. it’s high percentage of retired and elderly people). Consequently there is a wide variance in healthcare needs represented in the Island’s population, which are placing new demands on the healthcare workforce to meet those needs in the community. Our paper concludes that the narrative turn through this research is yielding positive insights to how health care is received by those whom it is intended to help, and importantly therefore, how health care professionals might alter their practice in the future, to enhance social approaches in clinical care and therefore to maximize the positive impacts of their actions. NB: The first author is a PhD by Portfolio candidate at the University of Central Lancashire. PhD by Portfolio requires a collation of personal experiences and professional attainments, upon which a ‘retrospective’ reflective critique of can be made, in order to guide and inform a new ‘prospective’ phase of research. This article is part of that process.