Nursing is love in action.

‘CARING IS VOICING THROUGH ACTION NOT WORDS ALONE’.

“Nursing is not an adventure …….. as some have now supposed – It is very serious, delightful thing, like life, requiring training, experience, devotion, a power of accumulating, instead of losing ………. all these things”

Florence Nightingale
1897

The concept of ‘Caring Care’ in Nursing:

The galloping changes in the health-care-delivery’ is demanding that the CARE which is meted out to the sick, should be more responsible, more empathetic and more caring.

Sickness magnifies a person’s dependency on others. The sick person is more and more in need of attention, understanding and tender care.

Care today is more disease- oriented and health care workers concentrate more on the ‘disease’ and less on the person who is sick. Ivan Illich, the philosopher calls this ‘the medicalization of life’.

Florence Nightingale practiced ‘Bedside, Individualized, transpersonal care. Nurses have inherited from her the concept of ‘CARE’ in a Cure-dominated-system. Are we (nurses) losing our grip on this rich heritage??

Technology is increasing by leaps and bounds, specializations in Nursing have taken precedence over the general bedside nursing – more and more nurses have moved away from the bedside and have allowed machines and gadgets to come in between them and the patient – no one is against technology, neither am I, nor am I against nurses being high-tech’, but in the race to be high-tech’ we have forgotten that the prime role and responsibility of a nurse is to be a ‘high-touch specialist’ we have to remember – always that ‘The Core of Nurses Work is CARE’.

This book is a small endeavor to bring back nurses to the bedside, to awaken their ‘love for caring’, to enable them to accept the challenges of bedside care and to enjoy the special uniqueness of being a bedside nurse. The time has come to value and embrace the caring practices and expert knowledge and skills that are an important part of nursing practice.

Pushpa Biswas.

Technological advances can be dangerous and unfeasible without a context of skillful and compassionate care.
Patricia Benner, 1989