Looking again at the phenomenon of nursing as it occurs in the real
lived world, obviously it is always an interhuman event. Whenever
nursing takes {13} place two (or more) human beings are related in a
shared situation. Each participates according to his own mode of being
in the situation, that is, as a person nursing or as a person begin
nursed. Since one is nursing and the other is being nursed, it follows
that the essential character of the situation is "nurturance." In other
words, the phenomenon of nursing involves nurturing, being nurtured, and
a relation--the "between" in which or through which the nurturance
occurs.
On reflection, it is obvious that nursing is an intersubjective
transaction. Both persons, nurse and patient (client, family, group),
necessarily participate in the proceedings. In this sense, they are
_inter_dependent. Yet, they are both subjects, that is, each is the
originator of human acts and of human responses to the other. In this
sense, they are _in_dependent. The intersubjective transactional
character of nursing cannot be escaped when one is experiencing the
phenomenon, either as nurse or as patient. Consider for example, some of
the most common nursing activities, such as, feeding and being fed,
comforting and being comforted, giving and taking medications. Although
this intersubjectivity is unmistakably known in experience, it is
extremely difficult to conceptualize and convey it to others. It rarely
is found in descriptions of nursing, and to the unfortunate extent that
it is missing, the descriptions are not true to life.
In real life, nursing phenomena may be experienced from the reference
points of nurturing, of being nurtured, or of the nurturing process in
the "between." For instance, the nurse may describe comfort as an
experience of comforting another person; the patient, as an experience
of being comforted. However, while each has experienced something within
himself, he also has experienced something of the "between," namely, the
message or meaning of the "comforting-being comforted" process. This
essential interhuman dimension of nursing is beyond and yet within the
technical, procedural, or interactional elements of the event. It is a
quality of being that is expressed in the doing.