LIVED DIALOGUE
The central insight (intuition or idea) from which this exploration grows is this: nursing itself is a form of human dialogue. I mean that the phenomenon of nursing, that is, the nurturing, intersubjective transaction, the event lived or experienced by the participants in the everyday world, is a dialogue.
Much has been written about dialogue and, as the word is now in vogue, it is being used in different ways. Here, the term "dialogue" is used to denote a broader concept than the typical dictionary definition of dialogue as "a conversation between two or more persons or between characters in a drama or novel." It is used in the existential sense. It implies an "ontological sphere," in Buber's terms, or the "realm of being" to which Marcel refers. Here it refers to a lived dialogue, that is, to a particular form of intersubjective relating. This may be understood in terms of seeing the other person as a distinct unique individual and entering into relation with him. In other words, nursing is a dialogical mode of being in an intersubjective situation.
As in common usage, here also, the term "dialogue" implies communication, but in a much more general sense. It is not restricted to the notion of sending and receiving messages verbally and nonverbally. Rather, dialogue is viewed as communication in terms of call and response. {24}
Nursing implies a special kind of meeting of human persons. It occurs in response to a perceived need related to the health-illness quality of the human condition. Within that domain, which is shared by other health professions, nursing is directed toward the goal of nurturing well-being and more-being (human potential). Nursing, therefore, does not involve a merely fortuitous encounter but rather one in which there is purposeful call and response. In this vein, humanistic nursing may be considered as a special kind of lived dialogue.