ABSTRACT
Here we look at how the concept of caring underpins ideas in nursing. With reference to debates on nursing services we see how definitions of care can be used as pragmatic, political tools to shape government policy. This entails a delineation of nursing tasks and personal care. Testimonies show that nurses of the past were not ignorant of this distinction but that it did not impinge on what was for them an intuitive understanding of nursing practice. Commonplace understanding of nursing is inseparable from a notion of caring but within this relationship the term caring is itself nuanced by the context in which it is used. In current policymaking, for example, it is imbued with political significance, sociologically it often serves feminist argument, and for individuals it can help to bind professional and personal identity. The latter holds true for many of those interviewed for this book, but in the professionalisation of nursing the indivisibility of nursing and caring has been unpalatable. The history and sociology of the professions has informed contemporary thinking on the relationships among caring, nursing, and femininity and presented theories that help to disentangle one from the other. Adopting this perspective, nursing commentary has increasingly tended to shy away from traditional holistic notions of caring, in the pursuit of an image for nursing that conforms more to professionalism and associated biomedical treatments of illness, rather than to comprehensive responsiveness.
