This chapter explored the foundations of humanistic nursing. The
discussion flowed naturally, perhaps unavoidably, into the realm of
meta-nursing. "Naturally," for the humanistic nursing approach is itself
an outgrowth of the critical examination of nursing as an experienced
phenomenon. From this existential perspective of nursing as a living
human act, the meaning of nursing is found in the act itself, in
nursing's relation to its human context.
Reflection on nursing as it is lived in the real world revealed its
existential, nurturing, intersubjective, transactional character. The
process of humanistic nursing stemming from the nurse's authentic
commitment is a kind of being with and doing with. It aims at the
development of human potential through inter subjectivity and
responsible choosing.
The actualization of humanistic nursing is dependent on the concurrent
development of its practice and theoretical foundations by practicing
nurses. An open framework derived from the human situation was offered
to suggest possible dimensions of humanistic nursing practice that could
be described and articulated into a body of theory.
Nurses who have considered this humanistic nursing approach in terms of
their daily practice have felt at home in the ideas. The
conceptualizations fit their personal nursing experience. If there is
any strangeness in the approach, it is perhaps that it does not follow
the contours of the clinical specialties to which we have grown so
accustomed that they may be more ruts than roads. This is not to say
that humanistic nursing is opposed to clinical specialization in
nursing. In fact, clinical nursing, as it exists in any form, is its
very heart and base. Humanistic nursing is not compartmentalized into
clinical (or functional, or sociocultural) specialties because it
applies in all clinical areas. It is, in the most basic sense,
cross-clinical. This may be the great advantage of humanistic nursing.
By orienting its explorations ontologically, it may foster genuine
cross-clinical studies of nursing phenomena. If nurses with highly
developed abilities in particular forms of nursing would struggle
together in collaborative cross-clinical studies of nursing phenomena,
specialization would serve to advance rather than fragment all nursing.