In a nursing theory course the final assignment was: develop a concept
relevant to nursing. Again I found myself struggling. The didactically
stated importance of investing precious time and energy into
constructing a synthetic conceptualization of a term eluded me. Time and
energy spent to better understand man as he was known to me in the
nursing situation seemed so limited. In these situations persons were
expressing so many things at one time, how could the conceptualization
of one term be relevant. Finally I understood: no one was saying that
any one term could equate any particular or group of {98} nursing
situations. They were saying that to communicate the nature or
experience of nursing with words, to develop nursing theory, relevant
terms needed clarification as to the meaning they conveyed and
delineation as to their inclusiveness and exclusiveness.
As this struggle subsided I could hear, "a term could be developed as a
concept or synthetic construct if one conceptualized its why, what, how,
when, and where and how these interrelated." In approaching concept
development the last but not least hurdle was, what term did I consider
relevant enough in nursing to expend this precious time and energy on
considering the many possibilities. The first term I began to
intellectually play with was "ambivalence." Now, I would attribute my
selection of "ambivalence" to my then existing ambivalence about
conceptualizing a synthetic construct. Then, I based its selection only
on its existence in my clinical nursing world. I was working
therapeutically on a regular, individual basis with an ambivalent
adolescent male labeled diagnostically as a paranoid schizophrenic. I
began to consider my clinically recorded data of my sessions with Bob
through ambivalence. What were the relationships between why, how, what,
when, and where Bob expressed ambivalence?
Struggling with the term "ambivalence" involved and interested me in
concept development. During this phase I overcame my fear of exposing my
thoughts, I took the risk, and my courage had the upper hand.
Nevertheless, another choice had to be made since now I was not willing
to invest this much time on conceptualizing "ambivalence" as so relevant
to nursing. Perhaps this signified that my own ambivalence had
dissipated. And again, I faced the question, what term would I want to
develop as a synthetic construct?
The next question that occurred to me was, what term would indicate why,
as a nurse, I am in the clinical health-nursing situation? Did I view my
value mainly as growth, health, freedom, or openness promotion? I worked
for a while with each of these terms and eventually discarded them. Some
long-hospitalized persons with whom I was working on a demonstration
psychiatric unit to prepare them for a more independent and appropriate
form of community living would never be stably balanced in health,
growing, freedom or openness. For many, these could be only flitting
memorable beautiful moments. Still I believed I was very much there in
the nursing situation for these persons, as well as for those who moved
into the community and found work and social satisfactions. Something
occurred between all of these 15 patients and myself--and that was
nursing.