Humanistic Nursing, page 39 by Josephine Paterson
<< Return to Title Details & Download
Purchase this title in paperback at Amazon.com
40
forth. So when a patient and nurse do meet in a given instance, each comes to the situation bearing remnants of feeling of having caused or not having caused this encounter with this particular individual. (Of course, even in the most de-individualized systems the nurse and/or patient can still control their meetings to some extent, for example, avoidance by the nurse being too busy or avoidance by the patient feigning sleep.)
The patient and the nurse are two unique individuals meeting for a purpose. In the existential sense, each of these persons is his choice, each is his history. Each comes to meet the other with all that he is and all that he is not at this moment in this place. Each comes as a particular incarnate being. Each is a specific being in a specific body through which he affects the other and the world and through which he is affected by them. This nurse who uses her eyes, ears, nose, hands, her body, this way here and now meets this patient whose body in this condition serves him this way here and now.
Furthermore, both the patient and the nurse have the human capacity for disclosing or enclosing themselves. So they have some control over the quality of their meeting by choosing how and how much to be open with and to be open to the other. Their openness is influenced by their views of the purpose of the meeting. In general, the patient expects to receive help and the nurse expects to give it. However, their views may differ on the precise need and the kind of help to be given.
Also, although the nurse and the patient have the same goal, that is, well-being and more-being, they have different modes of being in the shared situation. One's purpose is to nurture; the other's is to be nurtured. This difference in the perspectives from which they approach the meeting is reflected in the kind and degree of their openness to each other.
In describing their experiences nurses often have revealed that they are open to patients in a certain way. This is evident when nurse a