Caring Partnership within Newman's Theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness: Aiming for Patients to Find Meaning in Their Treatment Experiences

Despite the continuous advances in cancer treatment, many patients undergoing cancer treatment still suffer because of inability to find meaning in their treatment experiences. Nurses involved also suffer because they prioritize the implementation of treatment protocols rather than providing holistic care. Therefore, special care is needed in clinical settings. This report aimed to demonstrate helpfulness and possibility of “caring partnership” with patients in the treatment phase on the basis of Margaret Newman's theory of health as expanding consciousness. Caring partnership is a nursing intervention in a unitary and relational perspective that helps patients and nurses make a difference. For this intervention, patients need to recognize their own pattern in the relationship to exert their own strengths in finding meaning to their cancer treatment experience and so their lives, while nurses are encouraged to partner with them, trusting patients' own power and becoming a rich environment for them. Hence, dialog is necessary to facilitate patients' pattern recognition in process of the patient-nurse partnership. Three cases are presented for each treatment phase (perioperative, chemotherapy treatment, and prolonged postoperative self-care management). Through caring partnership with an oncology certified nurse, the patients found meaning in their treatment experiences and exerted their own inner strength to establish a new way of life, and the nurses reconfirmed what nursing was. From the theoretical viewpoint, caring partnership was helpful for patients in distress and was possible in clinical settings even with partial involvement during a treatment phase.