Caring to Nurses in a Hospital Setting: Meanings Unveiled by Photography

Care represents a human need and as a fundamental component of the social practice of nursing it should be reified in interpersonal relationships and in patients' biopsychosociocultural needs, thus requiring thinking on a regular basis. This study aims to analyze the senses and meanings of the caring process experienced by nurses in a hospital setting.

Qualitative research oriented by Symbolic Interactionism as the theoretical framework. The data were collected through photography and by semi-structured interviews with 16 nurses from a University Hospital of Northeastern Brazil. After a narrative analysis, four representative themes were perceived.

The nurses' perception of caring was related to building relationships based upon complicity, solidarity, care, love, and technico-scientific competence but also upon the work overload and working conditions and difficulty to deal with human emotions and feelings of suffering, which are exposed and perceived in the social interacting process.

The senses and meanings of caring converge into a rupture of the nurses' regular and crystallized actions. That assumes a critical and reflexive review of ways of interacting with the patient, family, and environment. It is necessary that nurses choose communicative strategies, such as photography, that can unfold feelings and emotions which are essential requirements in the process and in the evaluation of care in a hospitalization setting.