Background

The CECo narrative team leads on the methodological/research theme: ‘Narratives of cancer and life threatening illness’. Narratives have much to teach us about living with illness, suffering and experiences of care. Research designed to uncover and explore narratives in illness and palliative care contexts can inform practice and policy. There is a growing body of ‘illness narratives’ research which supports the value of this kind of approach in exploring the lived experience of people with illness, their carers and healthcare professionals involved in their treatment and support.

Building on existing evidence of the (often underused) potential in narrative research in palliative and supportive care, the CECo narrative theme aims to draw upon this knowledge; support the development of narrative research skills; and encourage a wider use of these methods in the field.

Theme objectives

The narrative theme is focused on:

1. developing knowledge through research using narrative data collection and analysis approaches through generating and drawing on people’s experiences of cancer and life-limiting illness from a range of perspectives including patients, informal carers/family and professionals
2. effective application and evaluation of knowledge and evidence from narrative inquiry for service improvement and practice development
3. narrative inquiry as an area of methodological innovation including therapeutic practices (e.g. counseling, art therapy)

Working principles

In 2007, members of the CECo narrative network agreed a set of ‘working principles’ to enhance narrative inquiry across the three themes;

‘Narratives are storied human accounts that can take verbal, written or image form. They provide access to people’s lives and experienced reality, normally with a temporal quality. Narrative inquiry views the narrative or story as the focus of the investigation whereby data collection encourages stories and narrative analysis is interested in interpreting and making sense of the stories themselves, from a variety of perspectives’.

Theme Research Fellow

Dr Liz Rolls

Planning team members

Janice Brown - University of Southampton
Sheila Payne - Lancaster University
Jackie Ellis - University of Liverpool
Joanna Reeve - University of Manchester
Carol Thomas - Lancaster University
Anne Grinyer - Lancaster University
Kathy Almack - University of Nottingham