The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Nursing: Telling Our Stories

Introduction

Linda Honan Pellico, Ph.D., APRN
linda.pellico@yale.edu

Telling a story, it’s as old as time. Somehow we are carried into another realm that might not been available except with stories. Creating the story carries a parallel richness and can be a source for understanding one’s own as well as another’s experience. Such was the notion behind asking our students to write their stories.

From an educator’s perspective, I reasoned I could not teach them any better until I understood what the experience of nursing was like from their perspective. I could not see my inflexibility until I felt it from their standpoint. And I could not augment activities or design successful curricula until I knew what worked.

Yale graduate nursing students are asked to write about their personal journey into nursing as a means of gaining insight into the profession of nursing. Their stories tell about the work of nursing, the extraordinary privilege of this profession, the juxtaposition of intimacy with strangers, the complexity of learning both art and science- they are not simply tales of ministering angels. Our students’ stories reveal where systems, educators, students and providers are not at their best, where we sometimes stand in the way of student learning and patient healing. And is it these stories that give us hope for the future. For once we see and hear, these captivating stories, they force us to change.