Narrative Remedies

Narrative Remedies

This podcast, brought to you by Danica Facca, Monica Molinaro, and Jessica Polzer, explores the role of narrative, or storytelling, as a way to unravel the complexities of the personal, social, political, historical, and moral dimensions of health, medicine, and health care. As critical health researchers who are entrusted with the stories of others, and who re-tell those stories in our own writing and presentations, we aim to not only create a window of understanding into a situation, personal experience, or event, but also to diagnose systemic failures and moral dilemmas and illustrate their effects on patients, families, and care providers. In this podcast, we offer these re-tellings of stories as narrative remedies that assist us in re-scripting care by provoking thought and actions that strive to relieve suffering and redress unjust conditions. Let’s listen, and learn from, Narrative Remedies. Host: Danica Facca (she/her) is a PhD Candidate at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada Co-Host: Monica Molinaro (she/her), PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Health Sciences Education at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada Guest: Jessica Polzer (she/her), PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada

Episodes

December 10, 2024 53 mins

In this episode, Monica, Jessica, and Danica reflect on the process of collaborating on the production of this podcast. Our conversation took a number of interesting and unexpected turns, but we return to the iterative and reflexive character of critical narrative research and we explore various ideas, including: the process, labour, and rewards involved in doing and supervising qualitative research; reframing progress and failure ...

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In this episode, Danica and Monica come full circle as they pick up on a nurse’s story Monica shared in Episode 1 and discuss how this nurse was able to repair her caregiver identity. Monica highlights how critical narrative methodology can provide deep insight into the complexities of nursing and the importance of storytelling in processing difficult experiences. 

Content Warnings 

(08:56 – 11:02): Story shared of child dying

(13...

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November 12, 2024 41 mins

In this episode, Monica and Danica explore the concept of ‘narrative repair’ and how it relates to nursing. Monica shares nurses’ stories of how they engaged in ‘narrative repair’ with patients and their families to create meaningful memories and keepsakes (e.g., hand mold) as testimony to the child’s life after they died. Monica shares her experiences of vicarious trauma when bearing witness to the nurses’ stories, and Danica join...

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October 29, 2024 41 mins

In this episode, Monica shares how the nurses’ stories consistently assigned value and meaning to relational caregiving activities they performed (e.g., talking with families, providing emotional support), which involved them being in close physical proximity to patients and their families. Danica and Monica reflect on and discuss two stories to illustrate situations where the nurses were unable to enact what they viewed as their m...

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October 15, 2024 47 mins

In this episode, Danica and Monica are joined by Monica’s colleague and former PhD supervisor, Dr. Jessica Polzer. Together, Monica and Jessica speak to the theoretical origins of ‘moral distress‘ as a concept within nursing scholarship and discuss the role of ‘counter stories’ as a way to diagnose moral distress as produced by institutional constraints. 

Content Warnings 

(37:26 – 38:51): Story of nurse in distress while caring fo...

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October 1, 2024 49 mins

In this episode, Monica shares her story about what brought her to conduct research on pediatric oncology nurses' caregiving narratives. Danica and Monica further discuss what it means to do narrative research from a critical perspective, the analysis process involved in narrative research, as well as the role of the narrative researcher in ‘bearing witness’ to the stories of their study participants while reflecting on two stories...

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September 24, 2024 5 mins

This podcast, brought to you by Danica Facca, Monica Molinaro, and Jessica Polzer, explores the role of narrative, or storytelling, as a way to unravel the complexities of the personal, social, political, historical, and moral dimensions of health, medicine, and health care. As critical health researchers who are entrusted with the stories of others, and who re-tell those stories in our own writing and presentations, we aim to not ...

Mark as Played

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