ABSTRACT
Dependency in nursing care is everywhere, no matter the capacities of the patient or the nature of their condition. In this chapter, the author explores the place of dependency in nursing care and how and why it brings moral tensions for nurses. He also discusses how nurses can and do deal with dependency in everyday care practice. He suggests that dependency is not a problem to be solved, but rather a given to be grappled and tinkered with. He also offers a moral vocabulary to specify this process of tinkering. To make his points, he draws from care theory, as well as from some of his own ethnographic research on care for people with intellectual disabilities.
