community of nurses allows each nurse and the
community to become more. I became aware of a
common call being issued forth by nurses from my
own experiences as a nurse manager.
In the report of the secretary of Health and
Human Services’ Commission on Nursing (Decem-
ber, 1988) we were told that “the perspective and
expertise of nurses are a necessary adjunct to that
of other health-care professionals in the policy-
making, and regulatory, and standard setting
process” (p. 31). The call or challenge being posed
to nurses is to help create the needed changes in the
health-care system today. I called to the community
of nurses where I work and we joined together to
struggle with this challenge. For while the impor-
tance of organized nursing power cannot be
overemphasized, it is the individual nurse in her
day-to-day practice who can actualize or under-
mine the power of the profession. As a group we
strove to acknowledge and support one another as
individuals of worth so that we in turn could max-
imize our influence as a profession.
In settings such as hospitals, the time pressure,
the unending tasks, the emotional strain, and the
conflicts do not allow nurses to relate, reflect, and
support one another in their struggle toward a cen-
ter that is nursing. This isolation and alienation
does not allow for the development of either a per-
sonal or professional voice. Within our community
of nurses it became clear that developing individual
voices was our first task. Talking and listening to
one another about our nursing worlds allowed us
to become more articulate and clear about function
and value as nurses. The theme of developing an
articulate voice has pervaded and continues to
pervade this group. There is an ever-increasing
awareness of both manner and language as we in-
teract with one another and those outside the
group. The resolve for an articulate voice is even
more firm as members of the group experience and
share the empowering effect it can have on both
personal and professional life. It has been said that
“those that express themselves unfold in health,
beauty, and human potential. They become un-
blocked channels through which creativity can
flow” (Hills & Stone, 1976, p. 71).
Group members offered alternative approaches
to various situations that were utilized and subse-
quently brought back to the group. In this way each
member shared in the experience. That experience
therefore became available to all members as they136 SECTION II Evolution of Nursing Theory: Essential Influences
our consciousness through articulation of our own
angular views. By opening ourselves to one an-
other’s experiences and points of view, we were
opening ourselves to the world of other possibilities
and shaking up the status quo of our own mind-
sets. Fifteen patients were interviewed over a period
of eight months. Once the descriptions of the pa-
tients’ experiences were obtained, the phenomeno-
logical method of reflecting, intuiting, analyzing,
and synthesizing was used to interpret the descrip-
tions.
We found that there were many anxiety-produc-
ing experiences on the first day in the day hospital,
but very few anxiety-reducing experiences that of-
fered the patient comfort and support. The two pa-
tients who left the study at this time found no
anxiety-reducing experiences at all. Subsequently,
recommendations were made to pay particular at-
tention to reducing the anxiety of the patient on
the first day. This is an example of how, through
this method, corrective measures can be formu-
lated and outcomes can be tested.
The concept of research as praxis is also illus-
trated in this research project. On an individual
basis, the nurses related that they experienced an
increased awareness of the need to be open to the
patients’ expressions of themselves. After reviewing
the interviews of a patient who had had a particu-
larly difficult course of treatment, one of the nurses
who was on her treatment team remarked, “We
weren’t listening to what she was telling us—we
just didn’t hear the pain.” Another nurse had a
similar insight into a patient’s experiences. She
noted with some surprise that her initial impres-
sion that a patient she was working with was hostile
and withholding had given way to the realization
that this patient—as a result of the negative symp-
toms of schizophrenia—was quite empty and was
really giving us all that she had to give. In future
interactions with this patient, the nurse was em-
pathic and supportive rather than judgmental and
angry.
POLICY: DEVELOPING
A COMMUNITY OF NURSES
Another group experience in which Humanistic
Nursing Theory was utilized was the formation of a
community of nurses who were mutually strug-
gling with changes in their nursing roles. In
Humanistic Nursing Theory, sharing within the