The nursing dialogue takes place in a real world of things, ordinary
things of everyday living and all forms of health care equipment. Both
types of objects affect the nurse-patient transactions and their
influence varies for they may be experienced differently by nurse and
patient.
Ordinary objects used everyday--eating utensils, clothes, furniture,
books, television sets--are so familiar that one usually takes their use
for granted. {33} However due to illness a person may be unable to
manipulate a knife and fork, for example. They become frustrating
objects. His tools are no longer extensions of himself but impediments
and barriers. He feels handicapped. His world of things changes.
On entering a health care facility, the patient finds himself in a
foreign world of strange objects. In place of his familiar possessions
he is surrounded by equipment, machines, instruments, solutions, and so
forth. He may experience these as bewildering, frightening, painful,
supportive, soothing, life-sustaining. The nurse, on the other hand, may
experience these same objects quite differently. To her they may be
familiar tools, useful aids, complex machines, annoyingly defective
equipment. Even in a situation that does not have special equipment, for
instance in a home, the patient's world of things changes as the nurse
converts ordinary objects into tools. Thus, while nurse and patient
share a situation, the things in their shared world have different
meanings for each. The things themselves as well as the persons'
relations to them can serve to enhance or inhibit the intersubjective
transaction of nursing.