Compelling, timely, and essential reading for healthcare providers, Meaning in Suffering addresses the multiplicity of meanings suffering brings to all it touches: patients, families, health workers, and human science professionals. Examining suffering in writing that is both methodologically rigorous and accessible, the contributors preserve first-hand experiences using narrative ethnography, existential hermeneutics, hermeneutic phenomenology, and traditional ethnography. They offer nuanced insights into suffering as a human condition experienced by persons deserving of dignity, empathy, and understanding. Collectively, these essays demonstrate that understanding the suffering of the "other" reveals something vital about the moral courage required to heal—and stay humane—in the face of suffering.

 

 

Winner, Nursing Research Category, American Journal of Nursing

Nancy E. Johnston, Ph.D., RN, is associate professor of nursing at York University, Toronto, Canada. Alwilda Scholler-Jaquish, Ph.D., APRN, is associate professor of nursing at the University of Nevada, Reno.