Many phenomena central to cancer nursing, such as the oncology nurse-patient relationship and experiences of living with and after cancer, demand superb qualitative research. Such qualitative research requires carefully detailing nascent implications. Despite this requirement, struggles to accurately convey the implications of qualitative research are commonplace. Difficulties in capturing these implications stem from a common misunderstanding. Qualitative research is often incorrectly understood as exploration preliminary to quantitative confirmation. This erroneous belief leads to the assumption that the implications of qualitative studies should be discussed and justified through quantitative standards. As a result, implications are often cast in misguided and overreaching terms that distort the value of qualitative research. Reviewing the tenets of qualitative methodologies helps correct misunderstandings. Unlike quantitative research in the positivist paradigm, several alternative paradigms of science, including naturalism, constructivism, and postpositivism, employ qualitative methods. Key principles of intersubjectivity, plural truths, and the reference point of a group or community–rather than a population–necessarily anchor implications of qualitative research. Consequently, terms like bias and external validity hold no place in interpreting and presenting the implications of that research. Instead, inferences drawn from qualitative research must be framed in terms of descriptive or conceptual relevance to illuminate implications for similar groups and oncology nursing, not for populations. Where standards framing implications of quantitative research are widely taught, few templates for deriving qualitative implications exist. Usefully, Kearney1 outlined levels of qualitative evidence and application of that evidence in a classic paper, addressing the gap in guidance for interpreting qualitative findings with analysis of their complexity and discovery. Her analysis of the structure and novelty of qualitative findings, along with ways in which those findings should be applied, offer a touchstone for framing implications of qualitative studies. Kearney categorized complexity and discovery, beginning with those findings restricted by application of a priori frameworks or theories, noting that they offer no novelty and limited complexity. The other levels of complexity are descriptive categories, shared pathways or meaning, depiction of experiential variation, and dense explanatory description. These offer ascending levels of complexity and discovery. Kearney’s lucid presentation allows us to match our chosen descriptive or interpretive qualitative methodology to the nature of the findings that the study should produce. We can then use her typology to evaluate our findings in relation to the level of discovery and complexity to derive implications. Kearney focuses on how qualitative findings influence practice and sets the stage for considering implications beyond practice. She outlines four modes that enable us to reflect on nursing practice in the context of future research, education, policy, and—amidst the planetary crisis—planetary health and sustainability. Findings restricted by the use of an existing model or framework are not easily applicable in these modes. Conversely, the other levels of descriptive categories, shared pathways or meaning, depiction of experiential variation, and dense explanatory description are easily applied through the following four modes. Gaining insight or empathy allows nurses to understand experiences of health, illness, and injury, including those generated by cancer treatment, for instance. Assessing status or progress within a process related to health or healthcare enables nurses to improve the way in which they know a person’s capacities, such as functional status after cancer treatment. Active partnership with people in our care allows for anticipatory guidance as they contend with life changes precipitated by cancer, for example. Finally, nurses can employ findings to coach people in our care to recognize and modulate their behaviors, emotions, and other responses to their health, treatments, and wellbeing. Kearney’s aim to launch a conversation about using qualitative findings to improve nursing practice directly influences other types of implications we are bound to consider. Improving nursing practice requires that we accurately interpret what qualitative findings mean for advancing education to ensure that improvements in practice are sustained. Similarly, assuring permanent change in practice and education requires leveraging policy from the work group to national levels to codify and secure improvements. Finally, implications for oncology nursing practice, research, education, and policy require contextualization with careful consideration of implications for shared environments from the hyperlocal—a chair in an infusion unit—to the global—our precious planet. Achieving sustained improvement in oncology nursing practice means we must always ensure that our research, education, practice, and advocacy are set in the most sustainable world possible. The lives of our patients, their families, our own lives and families, our communities, and the planet that we all share depend upon it.
Sarah H. Kagan (Tue,) studied this question.