Successful transition of the new graduate nurse.

Reports that new nurse graduates are not sufficiently prepared to enter the workforce are of concern to educators, employers, and other stakeholders. Often, this lack of 'practice readiness' is defined in relation to an inability to 'hit the ground running' and is attributed to a 'gap' between theory and practice and the nature of current work environments. To gain a deeper understanding of the process of making the transition from student to graduate nurse, discussion groups were held across Alberta with 14 new graduates and 133 staff nurses, employers, and educators.

Future echoes in pediatric palliative care: becoming sensitive to language.

As the specialty of pediatric palliative care emerges and develops, finding language to describe the complexity of "living while dying" is a challenge. Terms such as "life-limiting" and "life-threatening" are commonly used, but may not be sensitive enough to capture the experience of children and their families due to the restrictions and power at play in the history of the words "limit" and "threat". The search for the right words to use when speaking of children who are living while dying takes us to the language of metaphor and poetry that speaks to us in a different way, a way that encompasses not only the suffering, but also the dreams, hopes, and joys of children and families.

Language and power: ascribing legitimacy to interpretive research.

More than merely describing what constitutes a good or truthful interpretation, all judgments about the legitimacy of knowledge claims can be understood as enacting relations of power. That is, our understanding of what it means to make a reasonable claim to knowledge is already caught up in relations of power that privilege some perspectives and marginalize others. Language, understood as productive rather than reflective of meaning, both enables and constrains the kinds of statements we are entitled to make.