Professional Experience Placement

Schiller (2016) examines this emerging approach and offers explanations about how it has not/been utilised effectively in recent literature. The author explains what critical realism is by stepping the reader through what exists – the layers of knowledge (1) the real, (2) the actual, (3) the empirical.

In the paper, Schiller (2016) goes into detail about the domains and uses diagrams and examples to describe the approach. Figure 2 (p91) visually describes critical realism. She uses a hospital building to show the ‘real’ domain, being that inside there are interactions and events, but not all these interactions will be perceived by the individuals within, there will, however, be evidence of the actions (the empirical domain). The ‘actual’ domain is the actions that interact with the individual.  Schiller (2016) describes this stratification as a way of understanding complex social phenomena,  and to better articulate the many potential causes of observed social behaviours. Critical realism exists on the premise that reality is a social construct because as human beings we can only know what we have experienced or what we have presented to us (p92). Schiller situates the remainder of her paper in exploring the nursing literature that has used this approach to underpin research. Schiller (2016) critiques the 13 papers she found that used this method. The author concludes that those who use this paradigm need to strengthen their approach. Schiller (2016) argues that critical realism needs to continue to be used for its unique way of categorizing, highlighting and interpreting phenomena.

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