Support and caring: exploring the concepts

In their article "Dimensions of the Supportive Role of the Nurse in Palliative Care" (ONF 17:87-94, 1990), the authors used a grounded-theory approach based on the actual experiences of an expert nurse in supportive care. In this article, the authors relate their concepts of support to existing nursing theory and to previous clinical research in both support and caring. Justification for the dimensions of the model was found in the nursing literature. However, distinguishing support and caring as concepts was difficult.