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Nurses' narratives concerning ethically difficult care situations: Interpretation by means of lögstrup's ethics
Author(s) -
Åström G.,
Norberg A.,
Jansson L.,
Hallberg I. R.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
psycho‐oncology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.41
H-Index - 137
eISSN - 1099-1611
pISSN - 1057-9249
DOI - 10.1002/pon.2960030106
Subject(s) - interpretation (philosophy) , narrative , distrust , psychology , power (physics) , order (exchange) , social psychology , epistemology , sociology , nursing , medicine , philosophy , psychotherapist , business , linguistics , physics , finance , quantum mechanics
Lögstrup's ethics were used as a theoretical framework when interpreting 18 nurses' narratives about situations where it had been hard to know what was the right and good thing to do for a cancer patient. The phenomenological hermeneutic interpretation focused on (a) the nurses' experiences of sovereign and perverted utterances of life, ethical demands, interdependence and power; and (b) on the nurses' ways of relating to the ethical dimensions of the situation. In narratives about overwhelming care situations, the nurses did not make a conscious interpretation of whether the patients' demands were also the ethical demands of the situation. In these situations there seemed to be distrust and destructive interdependence between the co‐workers and it was seemingly difficult to be moved by the sovereign utterances of life. In narratives about situations which were possible to grasp, the nurses made a conscious effort to interpret the ethical demands of the situation and acted in accordance with their interpretation until a new interpretation was necessary. The interdependence among the co‐workers was used constructively in order to care for the patient.