Partnership in practice

Modern health care has increasingly focused on prescriptive, outcomes-oriented, and cost-effective practices concomitantly obscuring the humanness of the health experience. A reconsideration of partnership between nurse and client as the core of the discipline might call nurses back to what is essential to nursing: a caring relationship centered on that which is meaningful as health. This article points to the significance of the relational nature of partnership, differentiating its features and form from the prevalent understanding associated with prescriptive interventions to achieve predetermined goals and outcomes. The meaning of partnership is presented as nursing practice as it unfolds: a process of nurse and client relationship through which the caring presence of the nurse becomes integral to the health experience of the client as the potential for action. Exemplars provide illustration of this emerging view in practice and research. The article is intended to contribute to the expanding dialogue on nursing practice, inviting discussion of the relevance of partnership in different health systems.