Essay Interpretation | A scoping review of autoethnography in nursing

In the field of nursing, it is crucial to gain a deeper understanding of the patient experience, the role of healthcare professionals, and the cultural and social factors in the healthcare environment. While traditional research methods have limitations in revealing these complex phenomena, autoethnography is emerging as an emerging research method. It skilfully combines personal experiences with cultural analyses, opening up new perspectives for nursing research.

Martin Salzmann-Erikson from the University of Gävle, Sweden, published a review article entitled "A scoping review of autoethnography in nursing" in the International Journal of Nursing Sciences. In the International Journal of Nursing Sciences, Martin Salzmann-Erikson from the University of Gävle, Sweden, published a review article titled "A scoping review of autoethnography in nursing", in which he discussed the application, significance, and limitations of autoethnography in nursing research through combing and analysing relevant literature.

Combining personal narrative with cultural analysis and reflection, autoethnography can provide insight into the interplay between personal experience and cultural dynamics, and is important in qualitative research. In the field of nursing, although nurses have long recognised the value of ethnography, there has been less research on the application of autoethnography, and this paper aims to fill this gap by exploring how nurses can use autoethnography to deepen their understanding of nursing.

The study was conducted using a scoping review approach, based on the Arksey and O'Malley framework. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed using the PPC framework, and four databases, CINAHL, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus, were searched, resulting in the selection of 26 articles that met the criteria. Data were extracted from a variety of aspects, including author information, year of publication, and field of study, and the results were elaborated by drawing on thematic analyses.

The results show that auto-ethnographic articles in the field of nursing were published mainly by authors from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. The areas of research centred on mental health nursing, nursing education, palliative care and other miscellaneous areas. In mental health nursing, research addressed nurses' identity, stigma, and ethical dilemmas; the nursing education area explored faculty identity, racism, and the impact of teaching modalities on identity; palliative care focussed on communication, emotional, and ethical issues in end-of-life care; and the miscellaneous area covered a wide range of aspects such as rehabilitation and chronic pain management.

In terms of ethics, ethical approval and privacy protection were handled differently across studies. In terms of writing style, some of the studies used an emotionally evocative writing style, which is more common in the fields of mental health nursing and nursing education. Autoethnography has important implications for nursing practice, education, mental health awareness and professional identity, and a conceptual framework for integrating ontology, epistemology, ethics and practice is also proposed.

In summary, autoethnography brings rich methodologies and deep introspection to nursing research, with important implications for nursing practice and education, among others. Autoethnography can reveal cultural and social phenomena in nursing, and its unifying framework helps to understand the multiple dynamics of nursing practice. However, there are limitations to the study, such as a limited literature search and inclusion of only English peer-reviewed journal articles, and further research is needed in the future.