Anne Bruce

• PhD, RN
• Professor (Full) at University of Victoria

Background Islamophobia or, anti-Muslim racism, and more specifically, gendered islamophobia targeting Muslim women who wear a hijab is rising globally and is aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, anti-Muslim racism is not well understood in Canadian nursing. Purpose This study utilized narrative inquiry to understand anti-Muslim racism th...

Purpose: To explore how people with end stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and their family members describe living in the face of impending death. Methods: A narrative inquiry was undertaken using a social constructionist perspective. Data were collected in 2017–18 in two in-depth interviews, lasting 90 to 120 minutes approximately 3–4 mo...

Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) legislation was passed in Canada in 2016, yet the bereavement experience of family and friends is not well understood. Using interpretive description, we interviewed nine bereaved individuals. The time before the assisted death seems most impactful-an experience of bringing death to life shapes bereavement after d...

Recent discourses within breast cancer and gendered studies literature suggest some women are challenging postmastectomy bodies as abject bodies. Tattooing is an emerging body project in contemporary society that can offer women who live disembodied from their postmastectomized body an alternative. We consider embodied health movements, a type of s...

Background Most patients with advanced heart failure are ill-prepared and poorly supported during the end of life. To date, research has focused primarily on generalized patient accounts of the management or self-care phase of the syndrome. Little research has examined the end of life in depth or from the perspectives of family members. Aims The p...

Background Medical assistance in dying opens up uncharted professional territory for Canadian physicians extending their practices to include assisting and hastening death for eligible patients. Objectives To understand physicians’ experience of participating in assisted dying and the emotional and professional impact. Methods An interpretive des...

Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) and palliative sedation (PS) are both legal options in Canada that may be considered by patients experiencing intolerable and unmanageable suffering. A contentious, lively debate has been ongoing in the literature regarding the similarities and differences between MAiD and PS. The aim of this paper is to explore t...

Communicating openly and directly about illness comes easily for some patients, whereas for others fear of disclosure keeps them silent. In this article, we discuss findings about the role of keeping secrets regarding health and illness. These findings were part of a larger project on how people with life-threatening illnesses re-story their lives....

Background: Nurses witness pain and distress up close and consequently experience their own suffering. A narrative study of Canadian nurses' participating in medical assistance in dying found nurses' previous witnessing of unresolved end-of-life suffering has shaped their acceptance of medical assistance in dying. Little is known about the impact...

Aims To describe how people diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and their family members describe uncertainty related to impending death. Background There has been little research regarding the experiences of people with chronic kidney disease and their family members as they near the end of life. We need to understand these experiences to provi...

The provision of MAiD will be in flux for a few years, as legislative challenges are underway. This article addresses what leaders need to know and do to support nurses today and in the future regarding care of patients choosing MAiD. Drawing on complexity leadership theory and research into nurses' experiences in caring for persons choosing MAiD,...

Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) represents a historic change in Canadian society and the provision of end‐of‐life care. In this descriptive narrative inquiry, 17 nurses were interviewed during the first 6 months of assisted dying becoming a legal option for patients in Canada. Nurses’ experiences of either providing care for a patient who had ch...

see: https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/narrativematters2018/bestanden/abstract-book-final-print.pdf

see: https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/narrativematters2018/bestanden/abstract-book-final-print.pdf

Research into self-care practices suggests the need for conscientious and systematic support of nurses and other health care providers. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of an innovative self-care initiative. The goals were to explore the experience of nurses and other health care providers participating in a reflective, creative...

Work relationships between registered nurses (RNs) and practical nurses (LPNs) are changing as new models of nursing care delivery are introduced to create more flexibility for employers. In Canada, a team-based, hospital nursing care delivery model, known as Care Delivery Model Redesign (CDMR), redesigned a predominantly RN-based staffing model to...

Widespread demands for high reliability healthcare teamwork have given rise to many educational initiatives aimed at building team competence. Most effort has focused on interprofessional team training however; Registered Nursing teams comprise the largest human resource delivering direct patient care in hospitals. Nurses also influence many other...

Background: Inter-professional initiatives are prevalent in the healthcare landscape, requiring professionals to collaborate effectively to provide quality patient care. Little attention has been given to intra-professional relationships, where professionals within one disciplinary domain (such as degree and diploma nursing students) collaborate t...

Mortality rates of women suffering from an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) are high, and in young women are on the rise. The goal of this review is to investigate what is known about women's experience of AMI symptoms. By exploring the complexity and intersections evident in the literature though an integrative literature review process, it becom...

Narrative research methodology is evolving, and we contend that the notion of emergent design is vital if narrative inquiry (NI) is to continue flourishing in generating new knowledge. We situate the discussion within the narrative turn in qualitative research while drawing on experiences of conducting a longitudinal narrative study. The philosophi...

The aim of this review is to identify the experiences of pre-licensure or pre-registration health professional students and their educators of intra-professional teams. The objectives of this review are: 1. To identify the experiences of pre-licensure or pre-registration health professional students about learning how to work in intra-professional...

ProblemHow have the meaning and goals of lifelong learning for nurses shifted under neoliberal political policy?Methods This article critically scrutinizes the political undercurrents of lifelong learning. While the original intent of lifelong learning was to foster intellectual, critical, social, and political citizen engagement (creating “makers...

How does the organizational micro culture in emergency departments (EDs) impact the care of older adults presenting with a complaint or condition perceived as non-acute? This scoping study reviews the literature and maps three levels of ED culture (artifacts, values and beliefs, and assumptions) using an organizational culture assessment framework...

Objectives Although patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) who adhere to a pulmonary rehabilitation program are better able to manage their illness and experience a better health-related quality of life, pulmonary rehabilitation remains underused. This study aims to describe the experiences of patients who are in a pulmonary reh...

Background: Advances in science and technology have resulted in longer lives for people with life-threatening illnesses. However, little research compares the stories of people with different life-threatening illnesses. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to explore and contrast how people story and re-story life-threatening illness sp...

Aging with HIV is a new phenomenon. It is expected that by 2015, approximately half of adults living with HIV in the United States will be age 50 and older. We used narrative inquiry to explore how older adults with HIV storied their experience and made sense of aging. Over a 3.5-year period, we interviewed 5 older adults living with HIV for 13 to...

Using narrative inquiry, the researchers interviewed 5 older adults on 5 occasions over a period of 3.5 years about their experiences of aging with HIV. The participants' stories were analyzed for metaphors. Individual metaphors reveal a complex, unique struggle: living between tensions of uncertainty and hope, facing death and living in the moment...

Academic discourse proscribes a particular way of writing that may leave the reader informed but uninspired. There are three intentions for this paper: to create a counter-discourse for academic writing, to illustrate autoethnograpy as a compelling approach to nursing inquiry, and to demonstrate how autoethnography is well suited to research the ex...

Increasingly, people are living their lives without strict attachment to one gender. In this paper, we discuss key discourses identified in a literature review of transgender and transsexual issues in nursing. Our aim is to highlight the power of dominant discourse and lack of adequate understanding of gender diversity on the part of nurses. We use...

Aim: To present a case example of using an arts-based approach and the development of an art exhibit to disseminate research findings from a narrative research study. Background: Once a study has been completed, the final step of dissemination of findings is crucial. In this paper, we explore the benefits of bringing nursing research into public...

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to examine liminal experiences of living with the uncertainty of life-threatening illness. Increasing numbers of people with life-threatening illness live in-between the promise of treatment and the threat of recurrence or progression of disease, and yet this experience is not well understood. Design: A narrativ...

End-of-life (EOL) communication is lacking despite patients with heart failure (HF) and their caregivers desiring it. To review the existing literature to identify barriers that inhibit EOL communication in the HF population. We chose an integrative literature review method and began by searching CINAHL, Medline, PsychInfo, Web of Science, Health S...

To examine stories of spirituality in people living with serious illness. Although knowledge about the experience of people with various chronic illnesses is growing, there is little known about peoples' beliefs and perspectives relating to spirituality where there is a diagnosis of a serious chronic and life-limiting illness. A social construction...

This research explores perceptions regarding death and dying among people with chronic kidney disease. The methodology for the study was narrative inquiry informed by social constructivism. In-depth narrative interviews were conducted on two occasions with 14 participants. The participants included 10 men and 4 women (mean age of 66) who were treat...

This article presents a discussion of the use of palliative sedation in response to intractable (not responsive to treatment) existential suffering. Patients suffering from a terminal illness are often faced with severe symptoms at the end of life. Although palliative sedation is sometimes used when no other options are effective in relieving unbea...

Despite growing interest in spiritual matters throughout society, definitions and descriptions of spirituality seem incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory. In this article, the authors consider the possibility that such incompleteness is perhaps necessary and welcomed in addressing spirituality. In particular, they investigate the challenges of usi...

Existential and spiritual concerns are fundamental issues in palliative care and patients frequently articulate these concerns. The purpose of this study was to understand the process of engaging with existential suffering at the end of life. A grounded theory approach was used to explore processes in the context of situated interaction and to expl...

Existential and spiritual concerns in relation to palliative end-of-life care have received increasing attention over the past decade. To review the literature specifically related to existential suffering in palliative care in terms of the significance of existential suffering in end-of-life care, definitions, conceptual frameworks, and interventi...

The terms hospice and palliative care are often used interchangeably in Canada. However, these words have distinct histories, from which the authors explore their ideological roots. Questions are posed concerning the impetus to combine these terms-to unite compatible ideologies or perhaps to mask the potentially divisive differences between the two...

Nursing graduate supervision of theses and projects at a distance is a new experience for many faculties. In our global and mobile society, nursing students frequently seek graduate programs that are geographically distant from their home communities. As options for nursing graduate education through distributive learning become increasingly availa...

Using a case study approach in this qualitative study, the authors examine perceptions of the emotional challenges of hospice palliative care professionals. In-depth interviews were conducted and field notes were obtained from healthcare providers working in end-of-life care in hospital and community settings. Participants described experiences of...

The purpose of this study was to explore how people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) describe/story experiences of liminality associated with CKD and its treatment. This narrative inquiry was undertaken using secondary data. The people relating the stories described a number of liminal spaces, including living/not living independence/dependence, r...

Spiritual care is a component of end-of-life care that has become an expectation for healthcare professionals seeking to provide holistic care. However, until recently spirituality and spiritual care were not included in the educational training of most health professionals. Little is known about how best to support and teach spiritual dimensions o...

The perception of time shifts as patients enter hospice care. As a complex, socially determined construct, time plays a significant role in end-of-life care. Drawing on Buddhist and Western perspectives, conceptualizations of linear and cyclical time are discussed alongside notions of time as interplay of embodied experience and concept. Buddhist u...

In this interpretive study, the authors explore the experience of mindfulness among hospice caregivers who regularly practice mindfulness meditation at a Zen hospice. They explore meditative awareness constituted within themes of meditation-in-action, abiding in liminal spaces, seeing differently, and resting in groundlessness. By opening into nonc...

Through advances in interpretive inquiry, diverse ways of knowing and experiencing reality are increasingly made explicit in nursing literature. Nevertheless, the privileges of empiricism continue alongside a lack of language to consider other realms of reality. In this column, Aboriginal ways of constituting health and reality are explored. Morley...

Fatigue in adults with cancer has received considerable attention as a troublesome symptom that requires nursing intervention. Fatigue in children with cancer, however, has received considerably less focus. The first phase of the present study used qualitative methods to generate a detailed description of fatigue in children with cancer. Thirteen c...