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CHAPTER 11 Josephine Paterson and Loretta Zderad’s Humanistic Nursing Theory and Its Applications 129

Nursing is Transactional

CALL--AND---RESPONSE

NURSE

lived experienc

e

nurse im

age

expe

ctat

ions

state of b

eingness

nurse im

age

expectations

state of beingn

ess

lived experienceenter into

the experie

I need help nce of the patient

nursing

expressed in

I am prepared to give you help

educational preparation

professional development

PATIENT

being with-----------doing with
(presence) (procedures)
FIGURE 11–2 Shared human experience. bridges or barriers

their nursing to see this process of interrelating as
subjective human beings. Take, for example, per-
forming the task of suctioning a patient. This task
can be done with tenderness, dignity, and with
masterful technical skills that make the procedure
almost unnoticeable. I once watched as a nurse po-
sitioned and suctioned a patient; as she performed
the task, she made sure that she also repositioned
the little basket of flowers that she had placed by
the patient’s bedside. The repositioning of the flow-
ers really had nothing to do with the technique of
suctioning. It showed that the nurse recognized the
patient as a unique human being, and she did
something special to make the experience less
stressful and as comfortable as possible for the pa-
tient. Comfort in this instance refers to the idea that
through the relationship engendered and nurtured
in intersubjective dialogue, there arises the possibil-
ity for persons to become all that they can be in
particular lived situations.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL
BACKGROUND

The phenomenological movement of the nineteenth
century was in response to what its proponents
called the dehumanization and objectification of
the world by the logical positivists. Phenomenol-

ogists proposed that human beings, the world, and

their experiences of their world are inseparable.

You can easily see that a nursing theory that is

based in the human context lends itself to phenom-

enological inquiry rather than reductionism, which

attempts to remove subjective humanness and

strives to achieve detached objectivity. The early

phenomenologists saw their goal as the examina-

tion and description of all things, including the

human experience of those things, in the particular

way that they reveal themselves.

Phenomenology is not only a philosophy, but it

is also a method—a method that can be integrated

into a general approach or way of viewing the

world. Nurses who can relate to this method are in-

clined to cultivate it and make it a part of their

everyday approach to nursing. This method is no

less rigorous in its application than methods used

in experimental research to build theories. The

phenomenological approach is based on descrip-

tion, intuition, analysis, and synthesis. Of impor-

tance are training and conscientious self-criticism

on the part of the unbiased inquirer as he or she in-

vestigates the phenomenon as it reveals itself. In

phenomenology, a statement’s validity is based on

whether or not it describes the phenomenon accu-

rately. The truth of all the statements resulting from

the critical analysis of each phenomenon described