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Abstract |
Two convenience samples of 90 NZ registered nurses responded to two structured questionnaires designed to explore nurses views of caring in nursing practice.The studies demonstrate that nurses see caring as a central concept in their practice. From the response the meaning of caring was found to be multi dimensional, consisting of six components: value, expressive, action, relationship, knowledge and purpose. The value dimension includes areas such as humanistic value and professional value. The expressive component consists of empathy, compassion, trust, concern, sharing and willingness. Action components are helping, comforting, being there, empowering, advocacy, nurturing, advising, touching and performing nursing procedures. The major relationship component is partnership. An important part of the knowledge component is clinical expertise and the purposive component of caring consists of meeting health needs and promoting healing and welfare. The meaning of caring begins to emerge from these studies. However, they do not provide full understanding of caring phenomena. A further in-depth study of actual nursing practice is still in progress |
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