Abstract

This paper aims to describe the interpretive nature of burn care nursing using an example from the first author’s practice. It asserts how burn injuries are uniquely situated from a hermeneutic perspective as an embodied change that alters the way a burn injured person lives in the world. This paper was written for an assignment in a hermeneutic methodology class, focused on the role of the burns nurse, and further expanded in relation to the hermeneutic significance of burn injuries. It demonstrates the fit of hermeneutics as a way of understanding nursing practice and burn injuries, and serves as a support to the use of hermeneutics in the authors' Master of Nursing thesis project exploring the experiences of burn survivors. Keywords: nursing, burns, hermeneutics, embodiment.