Humility and its Practice in Nursing

Following a personal experience of transformation as a result of washing the feet of a terminally ill patient, an exploratory study was undertaken to investigate nurses’ experience of washing patients’ feet. Seven postregistration student nurses participated in the study by washing the feet of as ma...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: de Vries, Kay (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2004
In: Nursing ethics
Year: 2004, Volume: 11, Issue: 6, Pages: 577-586
Further subjects:B Humility
B Love
B God
B washing feet
B Heuristic
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Following a personal experience of transformation as a result of washing the feet of a terminally ill patient, an exploratory study was undertaken to investigate nurses’ experience of washing patients’ feet. Seven postregistration student nurses participated in the study by washing the feet of as many patients as they could over a defined period of time. They were then interviewed about the experience. The transcribed interviews were analysed using the heuristic enquiry approach. Symbolically, washing feet is an act of humility. In washing feet in the manner required for this study I suggest that the nurses were practising beyond role definition of duty of care. As a result of this they experienced interconnectedness and changes in their relationship with the patients whose feet they had washed that could be interpreted as a response to humility.
ISSN:1477-0989
Contains:Enthalten in: Nursing ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1191/0969733004ne740oa