TFN 4

• Kari Martinsen: '"Nursing is founded on caring for life, on neighborly love, … At the same time, it is necessary that the nurse is professionally educated…"'
• Kari Martinsen


  • From 1972 to 1974, she attended the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen
  • In her work for the graduate degree in philosophy (Magister Artium), she grappled philosophically with questions that had disturbed her as a citizen, a professional, and a healthcare worker
  • The dissertation Philosophy and Nursing: A Marxist and Phenomenological Contribution created an instant debate and received much critical attention
  • Period from 1976 to 1986 can be described as a historical phase in her work & published several historical articles
  • Published a "lit torch" of a book with the provocative title, Caring Without Care? In this book, they raised important questions about whether nurses were "moving away" from the sickbed, whether caring for the ill and infirm was disappearing with the advent of increasingly technical care and treatment, and whether nurses were becoming administrators and researchers who increasingly relinquished the concrete execution of care to other occupational groups
  • Based on this work, she attained the doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Bergen in 1984
• Theoretical Sources

  • Karl Marx, the German philosopher, politician, and social theorist
  • Edmund Husserl, the German philosopher and founder of phenomenology
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French philosopher and phenomenologist of the body
• Care


  • This "forms not only the value base of nursing, but is a fundamental precondition for our lives. Care is the positive development of the person through the Good"
  • Care is a trinity: relational, practical, and moral simultaneously. Caring is directed outward toward the situation of the other. In professional contexts, caring requires education and training
  • "Without professional knowledge, concern for the patient becomes mere sentimentality". She is clear that guardianship negligence or sentimentality are not expressions of care
• Professional judgment and discernment


  • It is through the exercise of professional judgment in practical, living contexts that we learn clinical observation. It is "training not only to see, listen and touch clinically, but to see, listen and touch clinically in a good way"
  • "Because perception has an analogue character, it evokes variation and context in the situation"
  • Discretion expresses professional knowledge through the natural senses and everyday language
• Moral practice is founded on care

  • "Moral practice is when empathy and reflection work together in such a way that caring can be expressed in nursing". Morality is present in concrete situations and must be accounted for. Our actions need to be accounted for; they are learned and justified through the objectivity of empathy
  • This means in concrete terms to discover how the other will best be helped. Sincerity and judgment enter into moral practice
• Person-oriented professionalism


  This is "to demand professional knowledge which affords the view of the patient as a suffering person, and which protects his integrity. It challenges professional competence and humanity in a benevolent reciprocation, gathered in a communal basic experience of the protection and care for life… It demands an engagement in what we do, it is about having an understanding of one's position within a life context that demands something from us, and about placing the other at the centre, about the caring encounter's orientation toward the other"
• Sovereign life utterances


  • These are phenomena that accompany the Creation itself. They exist as pre-cultural phenomena in all societies; they are present as potentials
  • They are beyond human control and influence. Sovereign life utterances are openness, mercy, trust, hope, and love
  • Sovereign life utterances are preconditions for care, simultaneously as caring actions are necessary conditions for the realization of sovereign life utterances in the concrete life
• The untouchable zone


  • This refers to a zone that we must not interfere with in encounters with the other and encounters with nature. It refers to boundaries for which we must have respect
  • The untouchable zone creates a certain protective distance in the relation; it ensures impartiality and demands argumentation, theory, and professionalism. In caring, the untouchable zone is united with its opposite, which is openness, in which closeness, vulnerability, and motive have their correct place
  • Openness and the untouchable zone constitute a unifying contradiction in caring
• Vocation


  • a demand life makes to us in a completely human way, is given as a law of life concerning neighborly love which is foundationally human
  • an ethical demand to take care of neighbor, so nursing requires a personal refinement in addition to professional knowledge
• The Eye of the Heart


  • the concept stems from the parable of good Samaritan
  • the heart says something about the existence of the whole person, about being touched or moved by the suffering of the other and the situation the other experiences
• The Registering Eye


  • objectifying, the perspective is that of the observer; concerned with finding connections, systematizing, ranking, classifying and placing in a system
  • represents alliance between modern natural science, technology and industrialization
• Nursing


  • Caring is fundamental to nursing
  • Trinity of Caring:
  • Relational means that caring requires at least two people. One has concern for the other. One suffers, the other will "grieve" and provides for the alleviation of pain. Caring is the most natural and fundamental aspect of the person's existence
  • Practical is about concrete and practical action. Caring is trained and learned through its practice
  • Moral refers to "if caring is to be genuine, must relate to the other from an attitude which acknowledges the other in light of his situation". Must NOT overestimate or underestimate his ability to help himself
• Person


  • This means bearing fellowship of tradition that turns the individual into a person
  • Parallel between the person and the body
  • Bodies that we relate to ourselves, to others and to the world. It is the unit of soul and flesh, or spirit and flesh
  • As bodies, we both perceive and understand
• Health


  • Health does not only reflect the condition of the organism. It is also an expression the current level of competence in medicine. The tendencies of the modern concept of health are such that if one has an unnecessary 'defect' or an organ which 'could be better, one is not completely healthy
  • IMPORTANT is to cure sometimes, help often and comfort always
• Environment


  • Space and situation – a person is always in a particular situation in a particular space
  • In space are found time, ambience, and power
  • Our interaction with each other, use of objects, words, knowledge, our being-in-the-room- all set the tone and color the situation and the space
  • Our challenge is to give patients and each other dignity in these spaces
• Application to Nursing


  • Nursing Practice: Caring is practically relevant as an overarching/general philosophy of nursing. It is clearly articulated and encompasses a precise formulation of how to understand and approach patients and nursing. The ability to promote reflection upon nursing practice in different contexts
  • Nursing Education: Most nursing colleges make good use of her texts, and works form part of the curriculum at a variety of educational levels
  • Nursing Research: Countless dissertations based on practical, concrete, and more theoretical issues discuss the relationship between empirical experience in light of her terminology and philosophy
• Clarity: Clearly states that life has been created and given to us. Created in dependence on each other and on nature. Caring for each other and for nature is fundamental.
• Simplicity: She used a poetic and philosophical rather than a scientific mode of speaking. Wrote general phenomena that affect us all, and that could easily be recognized in our personal lives, occupational or daily lives.
• Generality: This seems to be relevant for all patients who, because of illness or other reasons, need help and assistance.
• Accessibility: The patient's and the nurse's worlds of experience are diverse, nuanced, and multifaceted. A nuanced and varied language is required to deal with a multifaceted reality. This enables us to perform situation- dependent, good nursing - a professional moral practice
• Importance: Caring community is not dictatorial, nor is it society's passive arm.It exists only to the extent that we struggle for its existence. we must form it through solidarity, through morally responsible action, through the fight for greater equality and for community and social integration. Caring is an active and radical concept
• KATIE ERIKSSON'S CARITATIVE CARING THEORY
• Katie Eriksson: '"Caritative caring means that we take "caritas" into use when caring for the human being in health and suffering…Caritative caring is a manifestation of the love that 'just exists'… Caring communion, true caring, occurs when the one caring in a spirit of caritas alleviates the suffering of the patient."'
• Katie Eriksson


  • From 1972 to 1974, she attended the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen
  • She is one of the pioneers of caring science in the Nordic countries. She has the ability from the beginning to design caring science as a discipline, while bringing to life the abstract substance of caring
  • She was born on November 18, 1943, in Jakobstad, Finland
• Theoretical Sources

  • She wanted to go back to the Greek classics by Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, from whom she found her inspiration for the development of both the substance and the discipline of caring science
  • From her basic idea of caring science as a humanistic science, she developed a meta-theory that she refers to as "the theory of science for caring science"
• Caritas


  • Caritas means love & charity. In caritas, eros and agapé are united, and caritas is by nature unconditional love
  • Caritas, which is the fundamental motive of caring science, also constitutes the motive for all caring
  • It means that caring is an endeavor to mediate faith, hope, and love through tending, playing, and learning
• Caring communion


  • It is a form of intimate connection that characterizes caring. Caring communion requires meeting in time and space, an absolute, lasting presence
  • This is characterized by intensity and vitality, and by warmth, closeness, rest, respect, honesty, and tolerance. It cannot be taken for granted but pre-supposes a conscious effort to be with the other
  • Caring communion is seen as the source of strength and meaning in caring
• The act of caring


  • This contains the caring elements (faith, hope, love, tending, playing, and learning), involves the categories of infinity and eternity, and invites deep communion
  • The act of caring is the art of making something very special out of something less special
• Dignity


  • This constitutes one of the basic concepts of caritative caring ethics. Human dignity is partly absolute dignity, partly relative dignity
  • Absolute dignity is granted the human being through creation, while relative dignity is influenced and formed through culture and external contexts
  • A human being's absolute dignity involves the right to be confirmed as a unique human being
• Invitation


  • This refers to the act that occurs when the carer welcomes the patient to the caring communion
  • The concept of invitation finds room for a place where the human being is allowed to rest, a place that breathes genuine hospitality, and where the patient's appeal for charity meets with a response
• Dignity


  One of the basic concepts of caritative caring ethics. Human dignity is partly absolute dignity, partly relative dignity.
• Absolute dignity


  Granted the human being through creation
• Relative dignity


  Influenced and formed through culture and external contexts
• Absolute dignity


  The right to be confirmed as a unique human being
• Invitation


  The act that occurs when the carer welcomes the patient to the caring communion. Finds room for a place where the human being is allowed to rest, a place that breathes genuine hospitality, and where the patient's appeal for charity meets with a response.
• Suffering


  An ontological concept described as a human being's struggle between good and evil in a state of becoming. Implies in some sense dying away from something, and through reconciliation, the wholeness of body, soul, and spirit is re-created, when the human being's holiness and dignity appear. Suffering is a unique, isolated total experience and is not synonymous with pain.
• Suffering related to

  • Illness
  • Care
  • Life
• Suffering related to illness


  Experienced in connection with illness and treatment
• Suffering related to care


  When the patient is exposed to suffering caused by care or absence of caring, which is always a violation of the patient's dignity. Not to be taken seriously, not to be welcome, being blamed, and being subjected to the exercise of power are various forms of suffering related to care.