bio info for nursing instructor and theorist, savina schoenhofer

1. Conversations on a Prairie Path
with nurse scholar
Savina O. Schoenhofer

2. Between two points along the path:
Brazil and Mississippi
 How this conversation began
 A prairie path ?

3. Savina O’Bryan Schoenhofer

4. Conversations on a Prairie Path
 Scholarly characteristics
 Beginning of the journey
 Evolution of worldview and theory
 Scholarship of teaching
 The present and the future

5. Scholarship according to Parse
the three processes involved in
scholarly activity are
a perpetual curiosity,
a focused commitment,
and a willingness to risk challenge.
(Parse, 1994).

6. Meleis on scholar characteristics
 a passion for making a difference,
 dismantling old patterns that are based on unequal
power and reconstructing patterns that are based on
equity, shared power, and collaboration in decisions
 promoting cooperation and collaboration
 showing leadership to develop critical and
reflective thinking

7. Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
scholarship
 diverse talents
 connections of simplicity and wisdom that
intermingle the cognitive, emotional and
aesthetic lives of their target audience
 gently tying shoelaces: living the theory

8. Brazil
This nurse was like none I had ever seen or
heard of…she was educated, she was broad
in her thinking, she was extremely creative
and not at all "procedural" in her work with
our clients, she was truly "their nurse" and
I loved how I saw her being nurse

9. The early 60’s
… a special time in history
 The Cold War was settling in, the Soviet
Union was sending arms to Cuba, and there
was a general fear of the spread of
communism throughout Latin America.
 Papal Volunteers for Latin America, a group
that presaged the Peace Corp and did
general community development work

10. At the age of 29 returned to college
 2 Bachelor’s degree
 2 Master’s degree
 and a Ph.D

11. Influential authors in the 60’s and 70’s:
 King and Brownell’s The
Curriculum and the
Disciplines of Knowledge
 Nursing Conference
Development Group on
Concept Formalization
 Fiere’s The Pegagogy of
the Oppressed
 Teilhard de Chardin’s
The Phenomenon of Man
 Phenix's Realms of
Meaning
 Mayeroff's On Caring.
 …everything that
Fritz Perls and “Carlos
Canstenada” wrote

12. Development of concept of nursing
When I was in school, I was taught that the uniqueness
of nursing was in the nursing process. I wasn't too
long out of school when I realized that some problem
solving process that was popularized by an ed psych
person in the 1920's and actually promulgated by a
philosopher in the middle ages was not what was
unique about nursing…so I continued to inquire and
to search and to try to understand by looking at my
own practice and the practice of those I worked with
to see what the "value added" of nursing actually
was

13. Seed for passionate scholarship
 My mission became teaching about nursing
as a discipline and about explicit nursing
theories/frameworks to help nurses realize
the depth of nursing
 ...realize nursing as much more than an
occupation and/or a warm fuzzy way to
express good will.

14. A growing circle of mentorship
The workshop facilitator was a member of Orem's inner
circle and she joined our faculty that same year so I
was mentored extremely well…her name is Marilyn
Parker – the editor of several collections of primary
source nursing theories. Marilyn and I have
progressed from neophyte/mentor to peers and we are
practically sisters, best friends still today.
So having 1) the question – what is nursing; and having
2) access to a wonderful theoretician as early and
continuing mentor are the primary reasons for the
trajectory my career path has taken.

15. Schoenhofer’s third mentor:
Anne Boykin, RN, Ph.D
… Anne and I realized … caring was presented as a
means…while some of the most profound literature was
telling us that caring was not an instrument but an end
in itself.

16. So we decided to move ahead and develop our own
full blown theory of nursing that would be centered in
caring….it was Anne Boykin who influenced me to
realize that caring could be more than simply a
"warm fuzzy idea", but could actually be a
substantive concept that could ground the entire
discipline in a way that was true to its origins…

17. Publishing career began early
 Co-author of three books
 Chapters in seven books
 Over 23 articles in refereed journals

19. Early influences on the theory
 Mayerhoff: On Caring
 Roach: The Human Act of Caring: A Blueprint for
the Health Professions
 Carper: Fundamental Patterns of Knowing in Nursing
 Nursing Development Conference Group: Concept
Formalization in Nursing: Process and Product

20. Living the theory
To those of us who know Savina, her name is
synonymous with caring. She is most
decidedly a nurse scholar who has co-
authored a nursing theory that is very
personal and has offered an alternative way
of practicing.
- from a former faculty colleague

21. Assumptions
 to be human is to be caring
 persons are caring, moment to moment
 persons are whole and complete in the
moment
 personhood is lived grounded in caring
 personhood is enhanced in relationship with
caring others
 nursing is both a discipline and a profession

22. EVIDENCE OF CARING
COMMUNICATED IN NURSING
 VALUES
EXPERIENCED IN
THE NURSING
SITUATION
 NURSED
 NURSE
 ORGANIZATION
 SOCIETAL
 CAN BE
REPRESENTED,
DESCRIBED, NOT
ALWAYS
“MEASURABLE”
 ALWAYS
QUALITATIVE
 MAY BE
QUANTITATIVELY
REPRESENTED

23. Alternate theory:
Nursing as Medical Assisting.
 I use it kind of as "shock treatment" or
"paradigm rattling", to help nurses realize
that their present practice does have
systematization,
but that the systematization may have been
informally and subtly presented and
absorbed without their realizing there could
be another way to frame their nursing
thought and thus their nursing practice

24. Phenomenological frame of reference

25.  "only a very unparochial fish knows that its
environment is wet".
 and that has to do with recognizing the
lens/paradigm from within which we view the
world...and that has to do, of course, with
entertaining other paradigms

26. Scholarship of teaching
 it thrills me to help beginning nursing students grasp the
wonder of nursing as a discipline of knowledge and field
of practice, to help them enlarge their vision
 same thing about teaching grad students... to see nurses
who for the most part, come back to school because they
are getting pretty jaded and are looking for a way out of
nursing practice, begin to reconnect with their early and
deeply held commitment to engage in a life work of caring
and to re-consider the value of their nursing over the
intervening years and find joy in discovering that what
they have been doing HAS been worthwhile after all.

27. Use of story
I use stories in all my classes and in all of my research
...at the beginning of any class, the first thing I ask
students to do is to recall, fully re-collect and re-live
and then tell (usually in writing) the story of a nursing
situation that illustrated whatever value we are
looking at...usually I simply ask them to work with a
story that tells of a time when they felt they were
really nursing to the fullest. That story then is one of
the primary texts of their work … tell the story first,
THEN start intellectualizing about it,

28. and for grad students too…
 I also expect grad students who do
theses/dissertations using a qualitative
approach to have as part of their Chapter 1 a
section called Horizon of Meaning, with two
subsections: personal and professional...so
they essentially tell a story that illustrates
their own personal interest in the
phenomenon/issue they are studying.

29. Misssissippi
 Teaching online
 Golf!
 Communicating with those interested in the
theory

30. Future?
 Text on nursing education
 Working with doctoral students
 International Nursing Philosophy
presentation in September

31. A Pathfinder in Knowledge Generation
 Forerunners
 Pathfinders
 Pathtakers

32. Conversations on a Prairie Path
with nurse scholar
Savina O. Schoenhofer