Frances E Racher

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at Brandon University

Psychiatric nurses have a level of responsibility for everyone residing on the unit, which contributes to the need to nurse the population on the unit as a whole. Because the knowledge base regarding psychiatric nursing interventions in acute care settings is limited, this hermeneutic phenomenological study explored psychiatric nurses' experiences...

The knowledge base and understanding regarding psychiatric nursing interventions in acute care settings has been limited. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore psychiatric nurses’ experiences in providing nursing interventions to adult clients in acute care settings. Six expert psychiatric nurses were recruited throu...

Canada is a country of ethnic and cultural diversity. The Aboriginal peoples, the British and French founding peoples, and a wide variety of other ethnic groups create the cultural mosaic that is Canada. Health professionals work with individuals, families, groups, and communities whose lives are both enriched and challenged by the cultural diversi...

The goal of this phenomenological study was to gain an understanding of the experience of older couples when one of the partners was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Couples who were living with dementia discussed the impact of the disease on their relationships as marital partners and with others, the challenges they experienced in managing the...

The focus of campus health research, historically, has been on population health at the individual or aggregate level with little effort to examine the health of the students at a community level with a focus on the broader determinants of health and community-level intervention. The purpose of this article is to critique three models or frameworks...

This anthology of articles from diverse perspectives collectively makes a substantive contribution to our understanding of the nature of rural women’s health. The purpose of the book is threefold: to present a Canadian perspective on rural women’s health through the use of an interdisciplinary, determinants-of-health and primary healthcare focus an...

Respecting Culture and Honoring Diversity in Community Practice Frances E. Racher, RN, PhD Robert C. Annis, PhD Brandon University, Manitoba, Canada Nurses work with individuals, families, groups, and communities where lives are enriched and challenged by cultural diversity. The purpose of this article is to discuss challenges and strategies for...

To identify the nature of the health of rural people and work towards sustaining, supporting, and improving that health, nurses must understand not only differences between rural and urban, but also differences within and among rural people. Nurses must understand the implications of defining "rural" in different ways and choose appropriate definit...

The goal of the Community Health Action (CHA) model is to depict community health promotion processes in a manner that can be implemented by community members to achieve their collectively and collaboratively determined actions and outcomes to sustain or improve the health and well-being of their community; the community as a whole, for the benefit...

This article reports on a workshop in which participants identified sources of data on rural aging. Such sources are typically part of larger data collection efforts or special aging studies with large rural components. Finding and using data on rural aging are not only two different processes but they also face somewhat different obstacles and the...

The goal of the Community Health Action (CHA) model is to depict community health promotion processes in a manner that can be implemented by community members to achieve their collectively and collaboratively determined actions and outcomes to sustain or improve the health and well-being of their community; the community as a whole, for the benefit...

Nurses work with individuals, families, groups, and communities where lives are enriched and challenged by cultural diversity. The purpose of this article is to discuss challenges and strategies for respecting culture and honoring diversity. This article diverges from the traditional nursing practice of working with individuals to working with coll...

Defining the community as client or partner requires a different ethical approach, an approach focused on the aggregate, community, or societal level. A discussion of rule ethics, virtue ethics, and feminist ethics transports the community practitioner beyond traditional ethical principles to consider a more contemporary ethical foundation for publ...

How healthy are the residents of rural Canada? How healthy are Canada's rural communities? Members of an interdisciplinary research team at the Brandon University Rural Development Institute, Manitoba, Canada, formed a partnership with rural stakeholders in an attempt to strengthen and build capacity in rural communities. One component of this rese...

See Chapter 4, pages 38-60 in this document for Chapter 4, "Community Action".

See Chapter 3, pages 18-37 in this document for Chapter 3, "Rural Community Health and Well Being".

Researchers are advocating that a necessary condition of scholarly research is congruence between philosophical positions and research approaches. Phenomenology and postpositivism, traditionally, may appear to be situated in scientific inquiry as polar opposites and mutually exclusive paradigms. This article (a) describes the reflections of a nurse...

Researchers are advocating that a necessary condition of scholarly research is congruence between philosophical positions and research approaches. Phenomenology and postpositivism, traditionally, may appear to be situated in scientific inquiry as polar opposites and mutually exclusive paradigms. This article (a) describes the reflections of a nurse...

This article describes the third phase of a research study undertaken within a Canadian provincial regional health authority to explore and analyze mental health services and other resources used by rural consumers after discharge from inpatient mental health programs. The focus of this article is the qualitative research findings obtained from men...

Understanding the experiences of elderly rural couples in accessing health services can assist nurses and other health professionals in their roles as advocates, service providers, educators, programme planners, and policy makers. In this paper, Frances Racher explores phenomenology as methodology, and its fit with the unstructured conjoint intervi...

What is the potential of courses designed for nursing students to meet the learning priorities of other disciplines? Who could benefit? Nursing students at Brandon University interested in the 'community as client' concept requested a course that focused on the health of rural residents and the communities in which they live. Questions about (1) me...

In this phenomenological study, a purposive sample of 19 frail rural elderly couples were interviewed as dyads to identify programs, services, and relationships perceived by the couples as beneficial to their ability to continue to live independently in the community. Communication between the partners, and roles and relationships were observed and...

Access to health services is a major concern across North America and abroad, with particular salience for the residents of rural and remote areas and the health professionals committed to providing services to them. Intrinsic to this discussion is clarification of the phenomenon of access to health services, a concept that remains nebulous and obs...

In this phenomenological study, frail, rural elderly couples were interviewed as dyads. Couples participated in semistructured interviews and jointly constructed their responses. The elderly couple or dyad was the unit of inquiry, data collection, and analysis. The study sought to maximize the understanding of the couple as a unit as partners negot...

Working Paper #2, SSHRC Grant #828-1999-1029