ABSTRACT
The ever-increasing integration and expansion of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) within nursing (Tovey and Adams 2002) has given rise to questions about the meanings of CAM for nurses. This chapter will examine the place of CAM within nursing and the notions of ‘care’ and ‘holism’ upon which CAM integration depends. While meanings of care and holism vary within and across professions (Kaptchuk 1996; Cassidy 1998), these meanings are used to hold off and differentiate both individual identity, and professional boundaries (also see Shuval and Gross Chapter 6 this collection). Simultaneously, the hinge of ‘care’ invoked by the participants in the samples drawn upon for this chapter serves to integrate the often intrinsically contradictory health belief models underpinning allopathic medicine and CAM. Through building on definitions of care, what it should be, what it should address, who provides the care, and how it should be provided (Wilson 2000), nurses erase potential disjunctions and opposition between the contradictory health belief models of allopathic medicine and CAM in the context of care provision. Debates about (CAM) nursing care speak closely to sociological debates about the ethics of care more generally, and this chapter will consider the opportunities for critical engagement these two growing literatures offer each other.
