Journal of Advanced Nursing
Journal of Advanced Nursing
5 years ago

A narrative evaluation of a community-based nurse navigation role in an urban at-risk community

Ruta Valaitis, Nancy Carter, Helen Kirkpatrick, Janice Feather
Aims To explore community members’ stories of their experiences with a Nurse Navigator programme serving an urban neighbourhood and primary care practice to address persistent health and social barriers adversely affecting health equity and well-being. Background In response to striking health and social inequalities existing across neighbourhoods in a large southern city in Ontario, Canada, a pilot programme was designed to improve health and social outcomes in a specific “at-risk” neighbourhood. The programme includes nurse-led navigation support for individuals and families and networking to facilitate improved service integration at a systems level. Design A narrative inquiry approach based on the Three-Dimensional Narrative Inquiry Space method, as described by Clandinin & Connelly (Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research, ). Methods A thematic analysis of nine community members’ life stories from narrative semi-structured interviews (January–June 2014) in conjunction with field notes, observations and documents. Participants’ life stories created a common narrative of the experience of navigation in a community setting. Findings There were four main themes: “opening the door”; “more than just a conversation”; “making connections”; and “on a new trajectory”. Participants valued the development of a therapeutic relationship, which optimized social inclusion, barrier reduction and connectivity to supportive health and social services. Conclusions The relational process of navigation as an antecedent to barrier reduction has direct implications for programme development, continuing education of navigators and quality improvement of existing navigation services. Study findings have implications for development of navigation competencies for nurses working with priority populations to address health inequities.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1111/jan.13355

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.