ABSTRACT
As a nurse educator, I am always interested in exploring a nursing student’s experience of becoming a nurse. Other people agree and have used sociological concepts – for example, professional socialisation and role socialisation – to explore nursing students quantitatively.1-6 Researchers approach the topic qualitatively too, using phenomenology,7-10 grounded theory,11 and ethnography.12
These authors all provide insights into the nursing student experience, but theirs is not an explicitly ontological orientation. In a research project in which I asked student nurses to explore with me their experience of becoming a nurse, I was guided by an ontological theory, not a sociological or psychological one. I am not an expert in ontology, but I believe that philosophical insights into experiences are valuable for nursing practice and nursing education, just as I value insights from sociology or psychology. The purpose of this paper is not to present a comprehensive report describing a research study, but by referring to my study, I will argue that Ricoeur’s narrative theory as reflected in mimesis and his ontological theory, when used together, is a fecund approach for researching constructions of self identity.
