ABSTRACT

A great deal of writing about the professional life of nurses stresses the concept of caring. It has become almost traditional to distinguish the role of the medical practitioner from that of the nurse by saying that the former seeks to cure the patient while the latter cares for him or her. A commitment is understood as an existential stance. It is a relatively fixed orientation on the part of an agent towards a specifiable set of projects and concerns. The ideal of health is the object of the nurse's professional commitment and this leads to caring for the health of the client. Of all the problems that a client might have, it is his health that the nurse is concerned about. A nurse's professional commitment is not to a care or love for the person of this or that client or the persons of clients in general.