CHAPTER III — NURSING SITUATION AS THE LOCUS OF NURSING
The concept of nursing situation is central to every aspect of the theory of Nursing as Caring. We have claimed that all nursing knowledge resides within the nursing situation (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 1991). The nursing situation is both the repository of nursing knowledge and the context for knowing nursing. The nursing situation is known as shared lived experience in which the caring between the nurse and the one nursed enhances personhood.
It is to the nursing situation that the nurse brings self as caring person. It is within the nursing situation that the nurse comes to know the other as caring person, expressing unique ways of living and growing in caring. And it is in the nursing situation that the nurse attends to calls for caring, creating caring responses that nurture personhood. It is within the nursing situation that the nurse comes to know nursing, in the fullness of aesthetic knowing.
The nursing situation comes into being when the nurse actualizes a personal and professional commitment to the belief that all persons are caring. It should be recognized that a nurse can engage in many activities in an occupational role that are not necessarily expressions of nursing. When a nurse practices nursing thoughtfully, that nurse is guided by his or her conception of nursing. The concept of nursing formalized in the Nursing as Caring theory is at the very heart of nursing, extending back into the unrecorded beginnings of nursing and forward into the future. Acknowledgement of caring as the core of nursing implies that any nurse practicing nursing thoughtfully is creating and living nursing situations because, whether explicit or tacit, the caring intent of nursing is present.
Remember that the nursing situation is a construct held by the nurse, any interpersonal experience contains the potential to become a nursing situation. In the formal sense of professional nursing, the nursing situation develops when one person presents self in the role of offering the professional service of nursing and the other presents self in the role of seeking, wanting, or accepting nursing service.
The nurse intentionally enters the situation for the purpose of coming to know the other as caring person. The nurse is also allowing self to be known as caring person. Authentic presence, like most human capacities, is inherent and can be more fully developed through intention and deliberate effort. Authentic presence may be understood simply as one's intentionally being there with another in the fullness of one's personhood. Caring communicated through authentic presence is the initiating and sustaining medium of nursing within the nursing situation.
The nurse, with developed authentic presence and open to knowing the other as caring, begins to understand the other's call for nursing. A call for nursing is a call for specific forms of caring that acknowledge, affirm, and sustain the other as they strive to live caring uniquely. We must remember as well that calls for nursing originate within the unique relationship of the nursing situation. As the situation ensues, the call for nursing clarifies. The nurse comes to know the one nursed more and more deeply and to understand more fully the unique meaning of the person's caring ways and aspirations for growing in caring. It is in this understanding that the call for nursing is known as a specific situated expression of caring and a call for explicit caring response.