The Lived Experience of Being Comforted by a Nurse

During my master's program in nursing at the University ofAlberta my intro duction to qualitative research methods sparked an interest in phenomenology and led me to spend a semester studying with Vangie Bergum, a member of the Faculty ofNursing whose research interests centered around phenomenology and its application to understanding the experience pregnancy and childbirth. We spent many enjoyable hours discussing the writings of prominent phenomenologists and the potential this research method held for understanding everyday experiences related to health and illness. I wrote and rewrote my first paper using a phenomenological approach. With Vangie's encouragement, I pursued my interest in phenomenology further by enrolling in a course led by Max van Manen in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta the following year. Under his patient and thoughtful guidance I learned more about the methodological practices underlying human science work and completed the paper that appears in this issue. Researching the lived experience of being com forted provided part of the foundation for my doctoral dissertation which is focused on describing the ways that nurses use touch