The nurse, with developed authentic presence and open to knowing the
other as caring, begins to understand the other's call for nursing.
A call for nursing is a call for specific forms of caring that
acknowledge, affirm, and sustain the other as they strive to live caring
uniquely. We must remember as well that calls for nursing originate
within the unique relationship of the nursing situation. As the
situation ensues, the call for nursing clarifies. The nurse comes to
know the one nursed more and more deeply and to understand more fully
the unique meaning of the person's caring ways and aspirations for
growing in caring. It is in this understanding that the call for nursing
is known as a specific situated expression of caring and a call for
explicit caring response.
The nursing response of caring is also uniquely lived within each
nursing situation. In the nursing situation, the call of the nursed is a
personal "reaching out" to a hoped-for other. The nursed calls forth
the nurse's personal caring response. While the range and scope of human
caring expression can and must be studied, the caring response called
forth in each nursing situation is created for that moment. The nurse
responds to each call for nursing in a way that uniquely represents the
fullness (wholeness) of the nurse. How I might respond to such a call
would and should reflect my unique living of caring as person and
nurse. Each response to a particular nursing situation would be slightly
different and would portray the beauty of the nurse as person.
The nursing situation is a shared lived experience. The nurse joins in
the life process of the person nursed and brings his or her life process
to the relationship as well. In the nursing situation, there is caring
between the participants. Further, the experience of the caring within
the nursing situation enhances personhood, the process of living
grounded in caring. Each of these components of the construct of
the nursing situation raises questions for immediate and continuing
discussion.
How can an unconscious patient be a participant in a nursing situation?
Can "postmortem care" be considered nursing? How can the nurse know that
the other is truly open to nursing--can the nurse impose self into the
world of the other? What about an unrepentant child rapist or a person
responsible for genocide, can we say that person is caring, and if not,
can we nurse them? Does the nurse have to like the person being nursed?
Does the nurse seek enhancement of personhood in the nursing situation?
If so, might the goals of the nurse be imposed on the one nursed? If the
nurse gains from the nursing situation, isn't that unprofessional?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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