Nursing
Paterson and Zderad define nursing as a "lived experience between human beings". It is an evolving, affecting, and helping relationship in which the patient and nurse engage in a dialogue. They emphasize the importance of the nurse being aware of herself and of the client as unique human beings, and of understanding the individual perspective, identity, experiences, condition, and needs of each patient. The nurse must therefore modify her/his response in offering a genuine presence.
Paterson and Zderad refer to this as a "reciprocal call and response" that is achieved through an awareness of the nurse's own worldview, values, understanding, and responses, and responding to the others' responses and knowledge. Through understanding the self and the other, the nurse can engage in an authentic, therapeutic exchange of experience, understanding, and of being.
Nursing is unique from other shared, authentic exchanges in that the nurse's role is to help another who needs help. Nursing possesses a humaneness that is inseparable from the nursing role. Nursing is a "human transaction", and thus involves all of the human limitations, emotions, and potentials of each patient, as an exchange that affects the nurse, who in turn responds through her/his perspective and authentic being, which in turn affects the patient. Thus, while each participant might experience a situation uniquely, they will also have experience of the shared interaction, the "between" and its message and meaning. For example, the nurse might experience providing care, the patient of being cared for. They will both, however, have an experience of care-giving and care-receiving through their transaction with the other. As well, everything the nurse does physically is shaped by her "character of being in the situation". Thus, while a nurse might believe she has provided an insulin injection to a patient, she has done so through her own unique character and way of being in that moment. In doing so, the nurse is hereby communicating herself and responding to the client as a human being in much the same way as she is providing insulin in response to the client's blood sugar levels.
Nursing is an inter-human, transactional, interconnected dialogue of helping in a way that recognizes and expresses ones own genuine human-ness, and responds to the unique human-ness of the patient.
Paterson and Zderad refer to this as a "reciprocal call and response" that is achieved through an awareness of the nurse's own worldview, values, understanding, and responses, and responding to the others' responses and knowledge. Through understanding the self and the other, the nurse can engage in an authentic, therapeutic exchange of experience, understanding, and of being.
Nursing is unique from other shared, authentic exchanges in that the nurse's role is to help another who needs help. Nursing possesses a humaneness that is inseparable from the nursing role. Nursing is a "human transaction", and thus involves all of the human limitations, emotions, and potentials of each patient, as an exchange that affects the nurse, who in turn responds through her/his perspective and authentic being, which in turn affects the patient. Thus, while each participant might experience a situation uniquely, they will also have experience of the shared interaction, the "between" and its message and meaning. For example, the nurse might experience providing care, the patient of being cared for. They will both, however, have an experience of care-giving and care-receiving through their transaction with the other. As well, everything the nurse does physically is shaped by her "character of being in the situation". Thus, while a nurse might believe she has provided an insulin injection to a patient, she has done so through her own unique character and way of being in that moment. In doing so, the nurse is hereby communicating herself and responding to the client as a human being in much the same way as she is providing insulin in response to the client's blood sugar levels.
Nursing is an inter-human, transactional, interconnected dialogue of helping in a way that recognizes and expresses ones own genuine human-ness, and responds to the unique human-ness of the patient.