A qualitative investigation of reassurance

The findings in this exploratory investigation bear witness to the existence of good nursing practice in a system that is often criticized as inhumane. Nurses do attend to clients' emotional needs in health crises and health care situations that undermine clients' abilities to understand their experiences, to make choices, and to exercise control over their circumstances. The findings also disclose the complexity of reassurance as concept and nursing intervention. We note nevertheless a nursing style that includes physical proximity, touch, ministrations, and accompaniment over time through the experiences that threaten clients' assurance and challenge their resources. These are features of nursing practice that need to be given utmost importance through formal conceptualizations in order to preserve them in our shared nursing culture. From a research perspective, we have learned that nurses are able to describe well their experiences when asked to share in an atmosphere of expectation that experiences contribute to nursing knowledge. Qualitative approaches are especially well suited to establish such an atmosphere and to facilitate explications of nurses' work. The line of inquiry into caring as the core concept of nursing practice, which has gained the attention of nurse scholars in recent years, has enormous potential to advance humanistic nursing practice. This investigation of reassurance provides evidence of its significance for us and its relevance to the construction of knowledge about caring. Future studies of reassuring another and of being reassured using qualitative strategies contain the promise of protecting nursing expertise and contributing to its refinement.