ABSTRACT
This chapter details the experiences of nurses caring for two paediatric patients being treated for tuberculosis in a paediatric tuberculosis ward in Cape Town, South Africa. Their narratives evidence a reliance on using time-related metaphors to make sense of the many bureaucratic challenges accompanying care in this setting. Unlike the rigidity of hospital time, ‘TB time’ emerges as a different model of understanding the nexus of time, the messiness of everyday life and traumatic circumstances experienced by caregivers in a clinical setting.
