Joe MacDonagh - ’Daseinic elements of the ethicality of nursing practice’

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Joe MacDonagh, Technological University Dublin. 

Joe MacDonagh 'Daseinic elements of the ethicality of nursing practice' 

Abstract: This paper will examine the ethical basis of nursing using the prism of Heidegger's idea of dasein. It will look at how, in the nursing ‘moment' between a nurse and their patient, a nurse is called upon to be ethically responsive to the patient in a manner that engages in a dialogue with all those nurses who have provided care theretofore, are currently doing so and who will do so in the future. In direct patient care a nurse is responding to the ‘other' in front of her, with their specific personhood and needs, but also to the generalised other person who may fall into one or more disease categories. This toggling between a specific and generalised patient ‘other' presents dilemmas for nurses of how to shape care that attends to the needs of that individual patient while observing care guidelines and professional ethical precepts that are required by hospitals and professional nursing bodies. Data will be presented from interviews with nurses and from field notes observing nursing practice to substantiate the above and to show how nursing practice is not simply the observance of set and invariant modes of activity. Rather, nurses have to navigate the needs of: their professional training, their empathy with an often empained patient other, the changing expectations of those receiving care, the embodiedness of the other and their own embodiedness as well as supporting the patient to wellness, a less empained existence or through palliation to death. An understanding of nursing will be presented in which hermeneusis is suggested as a central part of nursing practice, wherein nurses- acting ethically- continually interpret the needs of their patients in providing the most appropriate care, against the backdrop of a constantly shifting personally and professionally accumulated knowledge of their role in providing care. 

Bio: Dr Joe MacDonagh is a Chartered Psychologist and a member of the research ethics boards of two acute hospitals in Dublin, Ireland. He is also a member of the Life and Medical Sciences committee of the Royal Irish Academy. He has a particular interest in bioethics, and has been involved in the organisation of seminars and webinars on this area. Finally, he is a former Honorary Secretary of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. 

This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 

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