Aesthetic Attitude Based on Kant's Aesthetics of Caring Relationships in Nursing.

(1) Background: Although aesthetic attitude has been comprehended as one of the fundamental traits in nursing, there is a lack of discussion considering Kant's aesthetics of caring relationships. The purpose of this study was to illuminate aesthetic and moral characteristics of caring expressed in the caring relationship between a nurse and patient and suggest a new perspective of aesthetic attitude based on Kant's aesthetics of care ethics. (2) Methods: A theoretical reflection was contemplated regarding notions of aesthetic attitude in the caring relationship between a nurse and patient. (3) Results: human faculty of reflective aesthetic judgment to feel the beautiful and the sublime through imagination and free play in Kant's aesthetics could be applied to the aesthetic attitude in the field of nursing. (4) Conclusions: A nurse who has trained with this aesthetic attitude can act as a moral agent and contribute to the protection and promotion of human dignity in a caring relationship.

Ethical Conflicts Experienced by Nurses in Geriatric Hospitals in South Korea: "If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen".

Ethical conflicts among nurses can undermine nurses' psychological comfort and compromise the quality of patient care. In the last decade, several empirical studies on the phenomena related to ethical conflicts, such as ethical dilemmas, issues, problems, difficulties, or challenges, have been reported; however, they have not always deeply explored the meaning of ethical conflicts experienced by nurses in geriatric care. This study aims to understand the lived experiences of ethical conflict of nurses in geriatric hospitals in South Korea. A phenomenological study was conducted. In-depth, face-to-face interviews were performed with nine registered nurses who cared for elderly patients in geriatric hospitals in South Korea between August 2015 and January 2016. Three main themes emerged from the analysis: (1) confusing values for good nursing, (2) distress resulting from not taking required action despite knowing about a problem, and (3) avoiding ethical conflicts as a last resort. It was found that for geriatric nurses to cope with ethical conflicts successfully, clear ethical guidance, continuing ethics education to improve ethical knowledge and moral behaviors, and a supportive system or program to resolve ethical conflicts involving nurses should be established.

Levinas' ethics of caring: implications and limits in nursing.

Nursing scholars consider caring a key concept in understanding what is involved in nursing and believe that it is a major issue in nursing ethics. In this paper, the moral characteristics required for nursing care are described and these characteristics are discussed on the basis of taking responsibility for the Other, as described in Levinas' ethics. First of all, the altruistic aspect of care in terms of Levinas' ethics is examined. That is, a nurse should meet the needs of a person who is suffering, respond to them morally, and take responsibility. Levinas puts an emphasis on passive sensibilities that lead a nurse to respond to the needs of someone who is suffering, and also on the moral responsibility that encourages a nurse to empathize with others. However, his ethics cannot explain clearly how a nurse, as a moral subject with autonomy, forms a caring relationship with others.

Probing the issue of informed consent in health care in Korea-concept analysis and guideline development.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to identify how informed consent is conceptualized by patients, family members, physicians, and nurses in Korea, and to develop guidelines for clinical practice in Korea. METHODS: This study employed the hybrid model to define the concept of informed consent through theoretical and fieldwork phases. For the theoretical phase, attributes of informed consent were identified through a review of the literature, and in-depth interviews were conducted for the fieldwork phase to develop attributes from the data and to verify the attributes identified from the literature review. Purposive sampling was done for 48 participants (12 patients, 12 family members, 12 physicians, 12 nurses), who were interviewed from selected units (orthopedics, cardiothoracic surgery, obstetrics/gynecology) from two university hospitals in Seoul and Kwangju, Korea. Attributes and processing issues of informed consent were extracted from both phases. RESULTS: Core attributes of informed consent include the patient's self-directed decision-making, fulfillment of legal responsibility, focusing on forging a trusting relationship, assuming active responsibility for explanations (physicians) and granting consent (patient), factors related to sufficient explanation, and the role of family. Findings were integrated into a set of guidelines for patients and family and health care professionals. CONCLUSION: The guidelines developed in the present study offer empirical parameters for an effective process of obtaining informed consent in Korea by seeking to decrease the gap in perceptions of informed consent among patients, family members, physicians, and nurses. The importance of advocating patients and developing a trusting relationship between health care providers and patients is especially noteworthy.

[Exploring the nature of caring in Hwa-Byung--transpersonal Caring-Healing Model].

UNLABELLED: Hwa-Byung(HB) has been categorized as a Korean culture-bound syndrome that is prevalent in married women of low socioeconomic status. PURPOSE: The Purpose of the study was to search for the essence of HB and a caring-healing process of HB. Then the research result discusses whether the Transpersonal Caring-Healing Model has been congruent with it. METHOD: Case examples resulted from in-depth telephone counseling over a period of time at the Women's Hot Line with a client who is a housewife with HB. The counseling content was analyzed through Giorgi's method of descriptive phenomenology. RESULT: The core meaning of the essence of HB was 'injustice'; and essential themes were 'lack of reciprocity', 'infidelity' 'suppressed aggression and powerlessness' and 'need for recognition'. The core meaning of the essence of the caring-healing process was 'caring-healing experience (maintaining a trust relationship)'; and essential themes were 'active listening', 'empathy' and 'forming a therapeutic relationship'. According to Watson, 'active listening', 'empathy' and 'forming a therapeutic relationship' were identified as intentionality, intersubjectivity and transpersonal. CONCLUSION: Transpersonal caring can release inner power and strength and help the person to gain a sense of inner harmony. Transpersonal caring is as important to healing as are conventional treatment approaches and even more powerful in the long run.

[A philosophical inquiry into caring in nursing--based on Ricoeur's narrative ethics].

PURPOSE: This paper was aimed to inquire into Ricoeur's self-hermeneutics and narrative ethics, and apply it to personal identity constituting caring and care ethics in the practice of nursing. Its purpose is to provide a philosophical foundation for caring in nursing. METHOD: According to Ricoeur's narrative identity, ontological caring was interpreted as personal identity constituting caring. His ethics were described as care ethics, which contributed to preserving and promoting the personal dignity of the client, as self in search for the good life in the nursing practice. RESULTS: Narrative understanding of the client pointed to the ontological role of care in the constitution of personal identity. From an ethical aspect of the narrative, respect for personal identity and personal dignity of the client was crucial to an ethical caring attitude, promoting self-esteem in the nursing practice. CONCLUSION: This paper suggested that Ricoeur's ethics could provide a philosophical basis for understanding ontological and ethical caring in nursing. This contributed to protection of the client from the threat of personal identity, as well as respecting their personal dignity.

[Postmodernism and the issue of nursing].

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to illustrate the main stream of postmodernism which has influenced theory and research in the nursing science, and then to consider the meaning and value ofwhat the postmodern perspective has meant to nursing science in the 21st century. METHOD: Derrida and Foucaults philosophical thoughts that characterized postmodernism through the interpretation of their major literature was studied. Based on their philosophy, it was shown how Derrida's idea could be applied in deconstructing the core paradigm in modern nursing science. In terms of Foucault's post-structuralism, reinterpretation of the nursing science in relation to power/knowledge was completed. RESULT: Postmodernism created multiple and diverse paradigms of nursing theory as well as nursing research. This was accomplished by deconstructing the modernism of nursing science which was based on the positivism and medical-cure centralism. Specifically, the post-structuralist perspective revealed issues around the relationship of power and knowledge, which dominated and produced modern nursing science. Contemporary nursing science accepts pluralism and needs no unitary meta-paradigm, which can reintegrate multiple and diverse paradigms. CONCLUSION: In considering the issue of nursing science in postmodernism, it can be summarized as follows: the postmodern thinking discovers and reveals diverse and potential nursing values which were veiled by the domination of western modern nursing science. These were motivated to create nursing knowledge by conversation in interpersonal relationships, which can contribute to practical utilities for the caring-healing situation.

[A critical interpretation of aesthetical approach to nursing].

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to interpretate Caper's view of the aesthetical approach to nursing, to discover problems of her arguments, and to ultimately expand the horizon of the aesthetical thinking of nursing. METHOD: By means of the critical interpretation of Caper's paper, problems of her arguments were discovered. This then was suggested was the proper way of the aesthetical approach to nursing. RESULT: Carper's arguments of aesthetics were seen to be confused, regarding the pattern of the nursing art and the relationship between aesthetical knowing and practical art, and to have no the nursing's perspective as moral art. The proper paradigm for the distinct thinking of the nursing aesthetics could be offered here through applying some aesthetical theories as follows; a mode of aesthetical knowing could be characterized as emphatical awareness in relationship between nurse and client, and a practical art of nursing understood as moral art in sense of the expression of the human dignity. CONCLUSION: This study suggested fundamental theme for the proper aesthetical approach to nursing in view of the aesthetical knowing and the practical art. The horizon of the aesthetical thinking in nursing can be expended through the inquiry into aesthetical theories which offer theoretical the base for nursing as an art.