The idea that nurses should be trustworthy seems to be accepted as generally unproblematic. However, being trustworthy as a nurse is complicated because of the diverse range of expectations from patients, relatives, colleagues, managers, peers, professional bodies and the institutions within which nursing takes place. Nurses are often faced with competing demands and an action perceived by some as trustworthy can be seen by others as untrustworthy. In this article some of the reasons for the importance of being trustworthy are (...) offered together with a preliminary discussion about how being a trustworthy nurse is far from straightforward. (shrink)

This article reports findings of a hermeneutic phenomenological study that explored the clinical learning experience for Malawian undergraduate student nurses. The study revealed issues that touch on both nursing education and practice, but the article mainly reports the practice issues. The findings reveal the emotions that healthcare workers in Malawi encounter as a consequence of practising in resource-poor settings. Furthermore, there is severe nursing shortage in most clinical settings in Malawi, and this adversely affects the performance of nurses because of (...) the excess workload it imposes on them. The results of the study also illustrate loss of professional pride among some of the nurses, and the article argues that such a demeanour is a consequence of burnout. However, despite these problems, the study also reveals that there are some nurses who have maintained their passion to care. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Increasing research attention to the ways that firms seek to influence the emotions of employees, consumers, and other stakeholders has not been accompanied by systematic attention to the ethical dimensions of emotion management. In this article we review and discuss research that informs the morality of influencing and regulating the emotions of others. What are the moral limits of the use of emotion as a management tool for shaping workplace behavior and influencing the thoughts and actions of consumers? Do the (...) ethics of emotional labor and emotional appeals (e.g., in consumer advertising) depart from moral rules that apply in “non-emotional” contexts? To explore these questions we examine research on the means by which individuals’ emotions are shaped and on the organizationally relevant consequences of individual emotional experience. We then discuss a number of potential ethical issues that are implicit or explicit in the organizationally sanctioned use of emotion management, incorporating existing literature in management and business ethics that has addressed the moral obligations of organizations in this context, and highlighting areas where there is yet work to be done. We conclude by discussing the implications of our analysis. (shrink)

The concept of ‘place’, and general references to ‘geographies of …’ are making gradual incursions into nursing literature. Although the idea of place in nursing is not new, this recent spatial turn seems to be influenced by the increasing profile of the discipline of health geography, and the broadening of its scope to incorporate smaller and more intimate spatial scales. A wider emphasis within the social sciences on place from a social and cultural perspective, and a wider turn to ‘place’ (...) across disciplines are probably equally important factors. This trend is raising some interesting questions for nurses, but at the same time contributes some confusion with regard to imputed meanings of ‘place’. While it is clear that most nurse clinicians and researchers certainly understand that place of care matters to their practices and patients, many diverse uses of ‘place’ are found within nursing literature, and contemporary understandings of the term ‘place’ within nursing are not immediately clear. It is in this context that this article plans to advance the discussion of place. More specifically, the aims of this paper are threefold: to critique ‘place’ as it appears in nursing literature, to explore the use of ‘place’ within health geography, whence notions of place and ‘geographies of’ have originated and, finally, to compare and contrast the use of ‘place’ in both disciplines. This critique intends to address a deficit in the literature, in this era of growing spatialization in nursing research. The specific questions of interest here are: ‘what is “place” in nursing?’ and ‘how do concepts of place in nursing compare to concepts of place in health geography?’. (shrink)

In this article we examine the nature of intimacy and knowing in the nurse-patient relationship in the context of advanced nursing roles in fertility care. We suggest that psychoanalytical approaches to emotions may contribute to an increased understanding of how emotions are managed in advanced nursing roles. These roles include nurses undertaking tasks that were formerly performed by doctors. Rather than limiting the potential for intimacy between nurses and fertility patients, we argue that such roles allow nurses to provide increased (...) continuity of care. This facilitates the management of emotions where a feeling of closeness is created while at the same time maintaining a distance or safe boundary with which both nurses and patients are comfortable. We argue that this distanced or ‘bounded’ relationship can be understood as a defence against the anxiety of emotions raised in the nurse-fertility patient relationship. (shrink)

This paper emanates from the concept of empathy as understood by the German philosopher Edith Stein. It begins by highlighting different interpretations of empathy. According to the German philosopher Martin Buber, empathy cannot be achieved as an act of will. In contrast, the psychologist Carl Rogers believes that empathy is identical with dialogue and is the outcome of a cognitive act of active listening. The empathy concept of Edith Stein, philosopher and follower of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, goes beyond these conflicting (...) views and offers a more complex interpretation, with relevance for both healthcare and nursing education. When studying Stein's three‐level model of empathy, a field of tension between perspectives of closeness and distance becomes apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting Stein's model of empathy as a strategy to overcome the tension and meet the demands of empathy. (shrink)