The point of no return : formerly abused women\u27s experience of staying out of the abusive relationship

Abused women often leave their partners. In fact, many women often leave seven or eight times before they leave for good, decide to stay, or are killed in the process of leaving. There is a rich literature on abused women providing information regarding abuse awareness, identification, assessment, intervention, and cultural issues; relatively few studies, however, have explored women\u27s experience of leaving the abusive relationship and staying out. The purpose of this study was to describe the experience of formerly abused women staying out of the abusive relationship. The study used a phenomenological interpretive methodology to describe the structure of the experience as related by nine adult female participants. Data were collected on the basis of phenomenological interviews, with audio-taping and verbatim transcription of the resulting audio tapes. Analysis of transcripts was done both individually by the researcher and within an interpretive phenomenological research group. The thematic structure derived from data analysis describes the women\u27s experience in the context of time, and in relation to others. Three major, interrelated, themes emerged within this context: Good/Bad, Stable/Unstable, and Empowered/Helpless. Findings are discussed in relation to nursing practice, education, and research

The health of women and girls determines the health and well-being of our modern world: A White Paper From the International Council on Women's Health Issues

The International Council on Women's Health Issues (ICOWHI) is an international nonprofit association dedicated to the goal of promoting health, health care, and well-being of women and girls throughout the world through participation, empowerment, advocacy, education, and research. We are a multidisciplinary network of women's health providers, planners, and advocates from all over the globe. We constitute an international professional and lay network of those committed to improving women and girl's health and quality of life. This document provides a description of our organization mission, vision, and commitment to improving the health and well-being of women and girls globally

An Open Letter to our Future Students in “Narrative and the Caring Professions”

A group of nursing, social work, education, and English faculty worked together for a year to explore how literature experiences designed for medical education might enhance professional preparation in their fields and address their common dilemmas of caregiving. The resulting insights reveal the ways in which adaptations of narrative medicine models offer benefits for students in these “caring professions.” They also indicate the promise of interdisciplinary reading experiences among students from these fields and suggest how these frameworks might address their common challenges of burnout and erosion of empathy in early clinical experience. This “open letter” to future students who will participate in an interdisciplinary reading group describes the challenges facing the professions of nursing, social work, and education, and explores the ways that doing narrative work together will prepare students to meet them.