Conceptions of care

Abstract

The word ‘care’ is, more often than not, attached as a suffix to the word ‘nursing’. Yet many people in all walks of life claim ownership of the word and both lay people and professional people use the term to denote what it is that they are doing when they are working with ill or dependent people. The aim of this chapter is to describe some of the facets of caring as it relates to nursing. Care and caring for people within the context of nursing are complicated and at time confusing concepts. This chapter will discuss the validity of defining care, describe a variety of definitions of the term and look at the reciprocal nature of caring. Caring and curing will be related to each other through a discussion of the expanded/extended role debate, and finally the personal cost of caring for nurses will be highlighted as an issue which is rarely given thought but which is integral to the caring role of the nurse.

If we can understand how complex and intricate, indeed how subjective caring is, we shall perhaps be better equipped to meet the conflicts and pains it sometimes induces. Then too, we may come to understand at least in part how it is that in a country that spends billions on caretaking of various sorts we hear everywhere, the complaint ‘nobody cares’. (Noddings 1984: 12).