ABSTRACT
Nurses are healers whose activities involve both curing and caring functions, although it is not always easy to separate the two because to care often is to cure (see Part III). This selection argues that cost-cutting changes to hospital practices, which have the effects of distancing nurses from patients, compromise the effectiveness of nursing care. Malone explains that where nurses come to be seen as technical workers or managers of lower-skilled, often temporary staff who perform discrete, disconnected functions, it becomes more difficult to know what matters in any individual patient’s case. In contrast, where healing practices are built on proximity, and caring is undertaken as a matter of course rather than seen as a waste of time or a distraction from technical tasks, the healing relationship is more human and satisfying to both patients and healers.
