A patient with cancer and her family in caring partnership based on Margaret Newman's theory of health as expanding consciousness

Abstract

The purpose, on the basis of Margaret Newman's theory of health as expanding consciousness in a unitary perspective, was to practice the caring partnership with a client who could not share their desires and find their future direction at a gear change period and document the process of their relational changes within this process. The design was research as praxis. The participant was a patient with cancer and her family in the midst of a difficult health situation. Through caring partnership, a nurse researcher asked to tell “the meaningful events and relationships in their lives” over four in-depth dialogue meetings. Data were collected from the tape-recorded dialogue transcriptions. In the process of caring partnership, the patient and each family member recognized their own pattern and family pattern of “being closed off,” their approach to the situation, and found a new direction through this process. The finding suggested that caring partnership as a nursing intervention would be helpful for nurses as well as for patients and their families in difficult health situations.