This approach

necessitates that nursing carers are attentive to the older person’s narratives, stories that have seemingly no bearing on fall prevention or their present AT13387 molecular weight situation. Stories told can promote the tellers well-being and remind the listener of who these persons are. Nurses and other carers are important listeners that can be changed by the stories they hear as they acquire a store of cultural knowledge (Frank, 1995; Medeiros, 2014), a knowledge that can subsequently provide a more open approach to injury prevention practice. The philosophers, Heidegger and Levinas were presented in the introduction. Interpretations of Heideggerian philosophy have helped create meaning from the participants’ stories. Levinas’ ethics of responsibility is especially relevant for health professionals. There is danger in a narrow injury prevention approach that focus on the protection of vulnerable body parts, such as osteoporotic hips or fragile wrists becomes the main concern. The older person’s disabilities and dependency can prevent nurses and other PD-0332991 concentration staff from seeing who these persons are. Levinas (1969) insists that moral responsibility entails a relational movement towards the other and attentiveness to their differences. Openness to older person’s stories about what is important in their lives can counter dominant master injury prevention narratives that have a generalized pathogenic risk focus. Attentiveness to stories

can help reclaim the identity of individuals and move the nurses so that both nurses and patients can be, in Levinasian terms, “borne beyond the given” (Levinas, Peperzak, Critchley, & Bernasconi, 1996, p. 34). Levinas’ philosophy sharpens the concept of difference and not sameness as a point of departure for health promotion nursing activities and warns against the pitfalls of assuming that other persons or groups of persons have a common identity. Methodological reflections Although the number of women and men participating

in the study is small, their narratives provide both specific and universal knowledge: Specific knowledge about the individual and their symbolic environmental circumstances Sitaxentan and universal knowledge about the importance of integrating cultural environmental knowledge in health promotion and care work. With the life-world philosophy as a point of departure, Van Manen (1997, 2014) helped us see the importance of life-world descriptions and the necessity of creative probing in interpreting and understanding human experiences. The authors see the necessity of further studies concerning falling, environmental understanding, and health promotion. This study will be followed up by an interview study with nursing staff on falls and fall prevention in nursing homes. Conclusion The scope of this study is small and the gender differences illustrated in the study cannot be generalized. The study set out to reveal how six older persons experience falls and falling.