CONCLUSION

As a theory of practice, humanistic nursing is derived from individual nurses' actual experiences in their uniquely perceived but commonly shared nursing world. Its development, therefore, depends on the articulation of their angular views and also on the truly collaborative effort of a genuine community of nurses struggling together to describe humanistic nursing practice.

Since the description of nursing phenomena is recognized as a basic and essential step in theory development, this chapter presented an approach and detailed some techniques used by nurses to describe phenomena. It is hoped that these would be viewed critically and creatively; that they would be used, varied, combined adapted, and lead to new methods suited to the description of nursing phenomena. And if they are developed, it is hoped that they will be shared for the growth of humanistic nursing depends not only on using and sharing what we learn but also on describing how we come to know. Then humanistic nursing theory will grow in dialogue.