Research Questions

1. What are the experiences of nurses during disaster response?

2. What are the factors that contributes and hinders nurses while responding their duty during disaster events?

Aims of the study

The aims of the study are to develop theoretical understanding of nurses’ experiences during disaster response and discover contributing and hindering factors to the nurses’ experiences. Utilisation of qualitative approach will allow any complexity to be explored and discover the experiences of nurses while responding to disaster situations.

Contribution to the body of knowledge

In the field of disaster research predominantly in exploring nurses’ experience, there is a dearth in the literatures. The studies conducted on nurses’ experience are focusing more on quantitative approach rather than qualitative. Although there are studies conducted on qualitative approach, it focuses merely on descriptive qualitative without applicability of any philosophical stance. The major contribution of this study is by the methodology adopted. I will utilise the grounded theory to explore nurses’ experience with the aim of the outcome is to discover factors that contribute and hinder them while responding during the catastrophic events. The main goal of utilising grounded theory is to explore social interaction of the participants within their ambience and yield new concepts or theory, served as a fundamental basis which will be employed for further study. The end results provides depth of insight and will help me to plan for appropriate action to be taken specifically in regards to disaster education. Furthermore, it will highlight the crucial roles of nurses in managing disaster victims effectively and efficiently without panic and distress after take into consideration the results related to their own experience. Among the existing approaches, I will choose constructivism based on the aims of the study which fits the criteria. This study will engage a constructivist grounded theory by Kathy Charmaz. As an epistemology stance, constructivist grounded theory by Charmaz presents the inductive approach to a corpus of data in which it resulting theory that fits the dataset. It interprets how participants construct the realities and present multiple perspectives, it has re-modelled the original purpose of classical GT.

Main Supervisor:

Prof. Kate Seers

Professor of Health Research,

Director

Royal College of Nursing Research Institute.

Royal College of Nursing Research Institute
Room A111, WMS
RCN Research Institute
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL

Kate.Seers@warwick.ac.uk

Co-supervisors:

Dr. Sophie Staniszewska

Royal College of Nursing Research Institute
Warwick Medical School
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL

Sophie.Staniszewska@warwick.ac.uk