Professional Caring in Practice: A Psychological Analysis

This book presents an account of the caring relationship in nursing practice. Interviews with practising nurses and hospitalized patients were structured and analyzed using a combination of personal construction theory, repertory grid technique and phenomenological psychology. The findings show how experienced nurses construe the process of caring in a professional context in broad psychological terms. It emerges that the nurses have a very clear picture of the boundaries which limit their helping. The later interpretive work brings out many of the detailed aspects of the nurses' and patients' experiences of the caring relationship. The different experiences which characterize the powerful position of the nurse compared with the vulnerable position of the patient in hospital also emerges.