Introducing Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research

We believe this journal is unlike any other journal currently published in the field of bioethics. We aim to publish several kinds of articles: narrative symposia, case studies, and qualitative research articles. Before describing what is unique about these article formats, it is worth dwelling on what they share in common: Narratives from people who are willing to share their experiences with others.

The Value of Narratives for Bioethics

For the purposes of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics (NIB), narratives are non-fictional personal stories about matters relevant to healthcare, health policy, and health research. There are several reasons why such narratives deserve greater attention in bioethics discourse than they currently enjoy.

Rich Data

Narratives provide ideal material for ethical reflection. Narratives present us with rich descriptions of human experiences, relationships, needs, feelings, values, and plans—all set within a unique context. This is the “stuff” of bioethics. True, we can consider bioethical issues in the abstract—healthcare access, medical innovation, or privacy rights—but the real significance of these issues is observed only when we see how they arise in human lives, and solutions to ethical problems should be evaluated primarily by how well they help real human beings to live better. Narratives cannot replace theoretical reflection, but they can enrich it and ensure that it preserves a connection to real lives, making it more relevant and meaningful.

Increasingly, there is an interest in empirical approaches to bioethical problems. However, the quality of empirical research is only as good as the quality of the data it starts with. Data that are thin—for example, derived from checking boxes accompanying a fixed list of propositions that are divorced from the contextual details of human decision-making—will be ambiguous and of questionable construct and predictive validity. In contrast, narratives contain rich, contextualized data capable of raising awareness of problems that are hidden from our view. Stories are capable of leading us to new insights into why certain things matter, why others behave as they do, and how practices may be perceived. And while narratives can provide rich data in their own right, they can also inspire and inform better quantitative research.

Rehumanizing Ethical Decision-making

Human research, healthcare, and health policy have all been plagued with instances of terrible mistreatment of human beings. More commonly, the needs of some human beings go ignored or are unnecessarily poorly met. People are capable of dehumanizing others or simply forgetting that they share needs and aspirations. When this happens, we risk losing empathy and the motivation to treat others justly.

Interesting

Everyone involved in healthcare—including patients, nurses, physicians, social workers, researchers, and policy makers—can benefit from reflection on the many ethical issues that arise in the diverse fields that comprise modern healthcare. While some people find theoretical argumentation or quantitative research interesting, many more people find stories interesting. Fortunately, we can learn through our natural curiosity about the lives of others.

The Three Sections of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics

Each issue of NIB will be comprised of 3 sections: narrative symposia, case studies, and qualitative research studies.

Narrative Symposia

Narrative symposia constitute the most innovative dimension of NIB. Symposia will typically consist of 10–12 personal stories on a common theme followed by 2 commentary articles. Narrative symposia from our first 3 issues address experiences of psychiatric hospitalization, conflicting interests in medicine, and working as a nursing assistant in long-term care.

The primary purpose of these stories is to provide rich descriptions of personal experience. Whereas qualitative research articles frequently publish only a sentence or two from any one person interviewed, narrative symposia allow stakeholders to share brief stories in their entirety and in their own words. Personal stories should give readers a sense of what it is like to experience the subject matter under consideration. Depending on the symposium subject, ideal authors of personal stories may include patients, family members, researcher participants, health care workers, researchers, or others.

Commentary articles analyze the narrative data shared in the personal story articles, identifying and exploring themes, contrasts, patterns, or new insights. Commentaries relate lessons learned from the stories to...