Participatory action research : nurses and elderly people

Project "theorises the engagement in an educational participatory action research project from the localised site of a nursing home for elderly people in Victoria".. This thesis presents the theoretical and practical development of a participatory action research project from the perspective of a localised site of action, a nursing home. The research design is inductively developed by participating staff of the nursing home, both nurses and non-nurses; the design and the range of participation are both unusual features of a nursing action research project in comparison with those conducted internationally to date. The role of the 'outsider' researcher, a nursing academic and a clinical nurse, was concurrently theorised and practically developed with the changing dynamics of this research project. A process of on-going theoretical and practical analysis of the research process and action in the nursing home was achieved through the use of 'critical incidents'. 'Critical incidents' arising during this participatory action research project have been theorised through a Foucauldian view of the history of institutions and the nature of modern power (Foucault, 1977). They gave rise to new understandings of the nature of nursing in a nursing home, and paid attention to issues of power, gender and ethics within this context. Social actions within the nursing home and the research process are explored, described and considered in the change process as being gendered in production. A focus on ethics, both of self ethics within the research process and of the development of situated, negotiated ethics in relation to others' daily actions in the nursing home, is explored and theorised through some of the critical incidents. Examples of the fourteen critical incidents include the exploration of aromatherapy which formed a way of interrupting the dominant production of medical interests in social actions of the nursing home, and the challenge to new staffing and catering decisions which interrupted managerial interests. A theoretical shift in this participatory action research project, and this thesis, is to see that undertaking new action rather than reflection may be the first step in liberatory processes and that these involve altering the boundaries of self.