Coming to Autoethnography: A Mental Health Nurse's Experience

Abstract

In this article, the authors outline how a doctoral student came to use autoethnography within a narrative inquiry study exploring the experiences of being an adult child of a parent with a psychosis. Throughout the article, they discuss the researcher's experiences and identify techniques they found useful in preparing for the present research process. As a qualitative research method, autoethnography is useful for making connections between researcher and participant, deepening interpretive analysis of both common and differing experiences, and producing knowledge drawn from compassionate understanding and rigorous reflection.