This book provides the first in-depth examination of the experiences of a large sampling of faculty members of color in nursing, medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry schools across the United States. Anchoring her study in grounded theory, Dena Hassouneh draws on extraordinary interviews with one hundred diverse faculty members—together with rich contextual data—to illuminate the deeply entrenched cultural and institutional challenges to equity that they confront. She also presents practical strategies to overcome those challenges. The book documents the ways in which faculty members of color are excluded from full participation in their laboratory or department; yet Hassouneh’s research shows that faculty of color can survive and even thrive. The interviews and data clearly reveal both the social, educational, and departmental contexts that determine satisfaction and success in recruitment and advancement and the impact that faculty of color have had on their students, peers, patients, schools, and communities.

     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