Recollections of Jacqueline Fawcett

In early 1987, David Wallace, the then Dean of Students at Samuel Merritt University College of Nursing, invited several nurses whose scholarly work focused on nursing theory development to meet at the College in Oakland, CA, to discuss a proposed series of videos about the life and work of each of several widely recognized nurse theories and to select the nurse theorists for the series (The first few minutes of the Martha Rogers video shows the participants at this two-day meeting). David, a psychologist, knew of films of prominent psychologists and wondered whether there were (1) prominent nurse theorists and (2) any recordings of these nurses talking about their work. When the nursing faculty informed David that the answers were yes, there were several prominent nurse theorists and no, there were no known recordings of these nurses discussing their work. My understanding is that David then secured funding from the Helene Fuld Health Trust for a series of videos, The Nurse Theorists: Portraits of Excellence. I was invited to interview each nurse theorist, a major honor and highlight of my nursology career. David, his crew of a camera person and a sound person, two officers of the Helene Fuld Health Trust, and I travelled to the home or university site of each nurse theorist to conduct most of the interviews and film the nurse theorist in her home setting. Some of the videos also included commentary from one or more of the theorist’s colleagues; two interviews were conducted in the television studio at Samuel Merritt College of Nursing.

The recordings at each of the theorists’ home or university was done with one camera, which required my interviews to be done twice—once when the camera was on the theorist and again when the camera was on me. This required me to ask questions exactly the same way twice. After a challenging start with David taking notes and reading them to me as I asked the questions the second time, he began to record the first set of interview questions, so that ad hoc comments were captured so that the second set was more spontaneous. During post-production, David and the crew cut the videotape so that the final video appears as if two cameras were used, showing a dialogue between the theorist and myself.  The two videos done in the television studio at Samuel Merritt College of Nursing had two cameras available, so the interviews proceeded quicker and easier.  This procedure was used for all of Volume 1 of The Nurse Theorists: Portraits of Excellence.

I was the producer for the two The Nurse Theorists: Excellence in Action. David, the camera and sound persons, and I travelled to Vancouver, British Colombia for the video about the use of Orem’s Self-Care Framework in home care, and to San Diego for part of the video about the use of Roy’s Adaptation Model; the other part of the Roy Model video was filmed in New York City where I was not present. I remember well the challenges of getting through Canadian customs with our recording equipment and ourselves despite having the appropriate work and equipment permits. We were finally cleared and went on to meet the nurses who were using Orem’s Framework in their practice.