The practice of empowerment and coercion by expert public health nurses

This article describes the dialectic of public health nursing responsibility to empower families in self care as well as the nursing responsibility to evoke authority as needed to protect children from violence and neglect. Through qualitative study of expert home visiting public health nurses' anecdotes (N = 95), these apparently contradictory activities were discovered to co-exist in helping relationships. The synthesis of the apparent contradictions applies community rather than autonomy as the fundamental moral guide.