Reconstructing the meaning given to critical incidents in nurse education

Abstract

Critical incidents in nursing education are usually seen as puzzling or problematic events. This article asks what it means to “be critical” and poses that it is not the puzzling, but the everyday experiences that should be the focus of reflection. It is in taken for granted that embodied beliefs, values, personal biographies, culture and gender are most likely lead to practitioners constructing events as “normal”. This normalising acts as a barrier to rethinking beyond existing repertoires of practice. “Normal” incidents become “critical” (i.e. thought about) only when subjected to questions that challenge long held beliefs about what is seen to be “good”. In Nurse Education we must foster this deliberate questioning so that it becomes a natural part of practice outside formal education. Scaffolding for a different knowing in nurse education requires more than the presentation of alternatives and the provision of time for “reflection”. This article poses a series of key questions, that when applied to normal events, challenge existing discourses and provides the possibility of achieving new understanding of self in the cultural and political contexts of nursing.