BAKHTIN, NURSING NARRATIVES, AND DIALOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Dialogical interaction is fundamental to considerations of nursing nar rative, discourse, and communication. The story the patient tells is l istened to, interpreted, and responded to through appropriate nursing care, Although nurses have long recognized narrative as central to hum anistic nursing practice, the theoretical considerations of dialogue h ave received less attention with respect to nursing knowledge developm ent Mikhail Bakhtin, a key philosopher of narrative in the 20th centur y, put forward a dialogical narrative approach that is directly relate d to nursing concepts of narrative, interaction, and personhood and su ggestive of a postmodern clinical epistemology. This article relates B akhtin's dialogical narrative approach to nursing practice.