An exemplar of a positive perspective of being dependent on care

This article is part of an ongoing study which aims at disclosing the meaning of being dependent on care. From a larger data set derived from 10 patients, interviews with one severely ill patient, her daughter and two of her professional nurses were selected to illuminate a "positive" meaning of being dependent on care. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim and followed by interpretation of transcripts using a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach inspired by Paul Ricoeur's philosophy. The interpretation discloses the meaning of being dependent on care as balancing between being free and negotiating when receiving care. Whether or not dependency on care is negotiated about seems to be about how the power that lies in the existing differences in ability is used. When ability, that is, power, is used to compensate inability, the patient appears free to be dependent on care. Dependency on care is accepted for what it is, when it is. When dependency on care is negotiated about, the differences in ability, that is, power, risk setting limits for what dependency on care is to be. There is a risk that dependency on care will be limited within the frame of what is regarded as polite, appealing and pleasing.