Humanistic Nursing by Loretta T. Zderad (good short books TXT) 📕

Labeled mental patients in therapeutic situation, in the sun beyond the shadows, express how they set themselves apart from the rest of the community {56} of man. They express how they experience themselves. They view themselves as the worst, the noblest, the unhappiest, the most maligned, and the most afraid. It comes out as if these superlative distinctions are their only claims to fame. In my humanness I appreciate the awesome dreads they live. They need to know that they exist in their unique distinctness. And yet, the separation and loneliness with which they adorn themselves and which professionally we have fostered with fear engendering diagnostic labels seem a heavier than necessary burden. In the light of existential loneliness, a part of each human existence, often I invite them to see themselves as not so unlike other men and as suffering the turmoil of existence as part of the human community, such as it is. One usually can note their surprise and disbelief of my view. Then, momentarily at least, tension seems to visibly fall from their faces and forms. When this idea of them is heard by them, its effect corresponds to how I experienced the technique in sensitivity group of literally being allowed to dance into what felt like the circle of man, our group.

To hear opportunities for humanistic nursing acceptance and support nurses, too, need to question their self-nurse-image within the nursing and health community. Do they know that they make and have real potential for making a difference, an important difference? Do they accept themselves as nurse? To me, a nurse is a being, becoming through intersubjectively calling and responding in her suffering, joyous, struggling, chaotic humanness, always trying beyond the possible while never completely free from ignoble personal human wants. And, through her presence it is possible for other persons to be all they can be in crisis situations of their worlds. For the nurse to be humanistic it is necessary for her to live her human condition-in-her-nursing-world proudly with all its vulnerability and all its wonders. As man, the nurse can recall and reflect on her "I," on her past "I-Other" experiences, and she can come to know and accept more and more of herself, as she becomes more. In humanistically recalling and reflecting a nurse will understand and respond empathetically and sympathetically to both her own humanness and the other's. She will recognize both self and other as "poor devil" and "poor saint," all-at-once.

On the other hand, if a nurse denies her own struggling humanness, she self-righteously will be apt to accuse either self or her other. This way of being denies, suppresses, and represses one's own and the other's ability to be, to be as much as potentially possible. Understanding man through this conception of him is important to the possibility of augmenting the implementation of humanistic nursing practice theory.

Authenticity With The Self: For Actualization of Nursing's Potential

Husserl, the father of phenomenology, suggested the study of our lived worlds, our experience, a return to the study of "the thing itself." Looking at the lived worlds of nurses one is confronted with conflicts and multiple {57} values. In their nursing worlds nurses often risk themselves in their commitment to good for their patients. They come to know aspects of their own and others' unique natures. These are often different from and frequently in conflict with generally accepted cultural values and/or institutional policies and rules. If confidentiality is an issue, does this dictate a suppression of nurses' complete knowing? Or does this call for a recognition of as complete a knowing as possible followed by responsible selection and revelation of that knowing which will advance knowledge and understanding of man? Understanding of man can change a person's way of being with other man and his way of existing in and responding to his world. I suggest the latter, as complete knowing as possible followed by responsible selection and revelation, with occasional risk taking to deepen the level of accepted cultural knowledge of man. Always, the nurse would protect an individual other man. This dispersion of knowledge, then, requires not only responsible being in the nursing situation but also mulling, pondering, assessing, and judging prior to disclosure.

As complete a knowing as possible, in humanistic nursing refers to its axiom, authenticity with the self. When I, nurse, respond in the arena of my lived nursing world, I respond to a particular person in this "here and now" with all my background and all my anticipation of the future. By respond, I do not mean to indicate that I overtly deliberately communicate or verbalize my total response. Rather I mean that I strive for awareness of my total response within myself to a particular person in a particular "here and now" viewed through my particular past and anticipated future. It is a struggle to grasp how I perceive and respond within all my capacity of human beingness. To attain the highest possible level of authenticity with the self requires later recollection of ongoing perceptions of the other and reciprocal responses, selected communications, and actions by the self. These recollections now become raw data available for analyzing, questioning, relating, synthesizing, hypothetically considering, and ongoing correcting. Sometimes sharing such recollections with a trustworthy confidant (clinical specialist, consultant) for purposes of reality testing is helpful. Often this can broaden the professional meaning base I attribute to both my perceptions and my responses. On return to the arena of my nursing world I then verify my perceptions. I can let the other know how I perceived his actions and be open to his further expression of how this world is for him. In professional nursing this kind of experiencing, searching, validating, utilizing of one's human potential capacity must be based in the ideals on which nursing rests. Primarily for me, I see myself, nurse, as comforter or being nurse in such a way that my other is helped to be all that he can humanly be in this particular "here and now" considering his unique potential.

So, being authentic with the self, is not an acting out of a nonthought through response or merely a doing of what one feels like doing. Rather it is the very opposite of this. It is a thought through responsible choosing of overt response based in knowledge and on nursing values. It must correspond positively with one's belief that searching and sharing in one's nursing world will promote both the nursed and the nurse to be more. If it is merely a {58} peeking in on, an exploitation of the other, for selfish learning purposes, it desecrates the very concept of nursing. One has the broad human potential of feeling like doing many things, all-at-once, that extend into all kinds of living. And this is true in, as well as outside, a nurse world. In recollecting and reflecting on perceptions and responses in all these extremes one becomes freer to select from within one's self the values to be chosen, actualized, and potentiated in one's nursing practice. Authenticity with the self calls forth confrontation of the self with one's motivations and alternatives. This permits a purposeful selection and an aware actualized overt response based on one's nursing value criteria artfully tailored to a particular situation.

I consider each nurse a scientific-artist: classical, modern, primitive, cubic, or interpretive. My inference here is that we express artfully in accordance with our uniqueness. Many nurses given the same data would accomplish with the same or a similar degree of adequacy through use of their particular distinct selves. Therefore, though the function called for might be the same, each nurse would approach the function and the patient differently. How one actualizes the result of thinking, and being authentic with one's self recalls what Jung said about art.

"Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will that seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense—he is "collective man"—one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind."[2]

Through the years, over and over, I have met nurses so driven, motivated, and expressive in their nursing worlds.

I called this section "authenticity with the self: for actualization of nursing's potential." In it I have been trying to say, the more of ourselves we are able to awarely include, the more of the other we can be open to and with. A capacity for presence with others allows us to share ourselves. Through this sharing others become more. They are able to internalize us as "Thou." This happening occurs in the reverse, too, and we become more.

In a nursing situation the quality of being authentic with the self is to be striven for. It is a taking advantage of and appreciating of our human ability and spirit. It fosters our pursuit of inquiry, improves our caring for others, the contributing of our unique knowing, and it allows us to shape ever further a scientific-artistic profession of nursing.

Authenticity With the Self: Potentiated in Lived Experience

This example is offered to support the claims for authenticity with the self made in the last paragraph of the prior section.

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As clinical supervisor and thesis advisor to a young graduate nursing student in her twenties the benefits of authenticity with the self were again brought home to me. She was taping her therapy sessions with two patients. These taped materials were to become her thesis data.

One of her patients was not much younger than herself. The other was a divorced woman in her forties, around my age. This young graduate nursing student was receiving clinical nursing supervision as a necessity in her particular situation not by personal choice or awareness of need.

>From the onset of her clinical supervision with me I was aware that it aroused her feelings about dependence. At her age this had meaning since she was still struggling for independence and interdependence. This is a difficult time. Her response to me was "respectful," sweetly and unawarely hostile, and she made it apparent that I was another nurse authority to be appeased, manipulated, and outsmarted. This behavior had been successful for her with past authorities. She was bright and had been able to complete intellectual requests and assignments at the last minute with little effort. During the initial phase of our relationship awareness of her struggle, her difficulties and her assets, allowed me to maintain a supportive kind of being with her.

In listening to her therapy tapes I realized that another clinical supervisory approach was called for. She was defending against relating to her older patient by behaving toward her as she probably felt toward her own mother, and often toward me. Also, she was defeating her therapeutic purpose with her younger patient by viewing her as if the patient were herself. The older suicidal, depressed patient was begging her for an understanding therapeutic relationship. She needed terribly to share her suffering. This woman did not need a "rejecting daughter" working hard to outwit her. The younger patient needed to share her angry feelings and sense of worthlessness.

Through the tapes and through weekly sessions with the graduate student, I came to know and understand her existing nursing situations. At this time neither the student's need to understand nor the patients' therapeutic needs were being met. The student, too, was aware of this in a sort of suppressed way. Indirectly, in responding to her patients, knowing I would be listening to the tape she would take a "sweet swipe" at me which placed the responsibility of all our efforts on my shoulders. So if there were no beneficial outcomes, obviously the blame could be placed.

During the initial phase of my relationship with the graduate student and during the initial phases of her relationship with her patients I came to understand. I listened, got into the rhythm of these other spirits, reflected on what I had come to know, and out of this experience assessed and planned.

Later, taking what I had come to know, as just how it was for all of us, I shared my knowing with the graduate student and budding first-rate therapist. Together we explored the implications of the above. She became invested, involved, and excited about herself becoming more. We, myself and each of her patients, become for her more whom we essentially were. Most important to her and to me, this graduate student grew in