In the humanistic perspective the nurse also is viewed as a human person, as a being in a body rather than merely as a function or a doer of activities. Conscious recognition of this fact opens many areas for exploration. Obviously, the nurse's actions (her being with and doing with), that affect the patient's world, are expressed through her body. How is nurturance communicated and actually effected through nursing activities? From the other side, consider the nurse as being affected by the world through her body. What depths of "nursing content" could we fathom if we accepted the existential dictum that "the body knows?" Would we dismiss so lightly those gems of clinical wisdom nurses attribute disparagingly to "gut reaction," "unscientific intuition," or "years of experience"? Would we value serious exploration and extraction of these natural resources in the nursing world? The framework suggests, further, the possibilities of exploring the development of human potential, both patient's and nurse's, as it occurs in the unique domain of nursing's intersubjective transactions. What human resources are called forth in the shared situations during which nurses coexperience and cosearch with patients the varied meanings of being and becoming over the entire range of life from birth to death? How does it occur? What is the process? What promotes well-being or becoming more when facing life, suffering, death? For the patient? For the nurse? What knowledge gained through the study of nursing, a particular form of the human situation, could be contributed to the general body of human sciences? Finally, within this framework, all the phenomena experienced in the nursing situation could be explored in relation to their attributes of time and space. More specifically, from an existential perspective, the focus would be directed toward the significance of lived time and space, that is, time and space as experienced by the patient and/or the nurse, and as shared intersubjectively. For example, waiting, silence, chronicity, emergency, positioning a patient in bed, moving through space in a wheelchair, crutchwalking, pacing, could be considered from the standpoint of the patient's experienced space and time, or from the nurse's, or as a shared event. Explorations of this kind could provide valuable insights into important nursing phenomena, such as, presence, empathy, comfort, timing. {20} The human situation, then, is the ground within which nursing takes form. As such, it provides a framework for approaching the study and development of humanistic nursing. As an angular view, it holds the focus on the basic question underlying nursing practice: Is this particular intersubjective, transactional nursing event humanizing or dehumanizing? CONCLUSION