Abstract: This thesis focuses on the experience of being human as process in order to reveal being. Illness and health are seen as reflections of this process of revelation. This work argues that health and illness are physical expressions of consciousness and therefore an outcome of what a human being has thought. In this way, this work shows how thought/intent serves to create life in the moment. In this understanding lies the potential to change reality, to change life. The thesis identifies self-responsibility as the key to changing consciousness. Taking responsibility for the creation of one's reality eliminates the human tendency to blame another for what is experienced in life. To that end, this work argues, we are each free to choose what is felt in response to life. In so doing, we can become conscious that life is a choice, that is to be approached from either the position of perfection, or excellence. The author proposes that, in the understanding that human beings are the creators of their reality, it is possible to conceive of care in nursing that is directed at changing thinking/thought. Such change would be to focus on the excellence of life, and in that way enact care in nursing that is an enabling through a process of being that is an emotional allowance in response to life. To this end, this work is titled Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis. The aesthetic is emotion and feeling. Praxis, is presented in its dialectical relationship of thought and action that is then bound to emotion and feeling in such a way that it illuminates the nature of thinking. This way of thinking, this work shows, is transformatory. Where transformation is a process of being that as a state of excellence is one of incremental human freedom accompanied by incremental responsibility.

Abstract: This article examines the knowledge and power relationships between the medical profession and nurses during the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that the 1901 Nurses' Registration Act allowed doctors to exert control over the nursing profession and that the hierarchal structure of the profession contributes to the culture of control and surveillance.

Abstract: This article presents a reconsideration of partnership between nurse and client as the core of the nursing discipline. It points to the significance of the relational nature of partnership, differentiating its features and form from the prevalent understanding associated with prescriptive interventions to achieve predetermined goals and outcomes. The meaning of partnership is presented within the nursing process where the caring presence of the nurse becomes integral to the health experience of the client as the potential for action. Exemplars provide illustration of this emerging view in practice and research. This is the first of a series of articles written as a partnership between nurse scholars from Iceland, New Zealand and the USA. The series draws on research projects that explored the philosophical, theoretical, ethical and practical nature of nursing practice and its significance for health and healthcare in a world of changing need.

Abstract: This study uses a critical approach to analyse influences connected to opportunities for nurses to have their unique contribution to the health system recognised, and identifies a plan of action. The stories as told by four Northland nurses, identified the underlying principle of self-knowledge which, when connected to core values emerged as personal power with the language of possibility. Other factors which enabled opportunity recognition were labelled as: knowing the self, integrating core values from personal and professional qualities, connecting these to an intuitive plan, trusting it because it is value-based, using that plan to form goals and achieve direction. Integrating core values into goal setting enabled people to make choices that would enhance as well as protect their personal development. This study has implications for nurses as they seek out places where they can work well and for health planners to design systems where this can happen.

Abstract: The aim of this research was to explore surveillance discourses within New Zealand child health nursing and to identify whether surveillance practices have implications in this context for power relations. Five experienced and practising Plunket nurses were each interviewed twice. The texts generated by these semi-structured interviews were analysed using a Foucauldian approach to critical discourse analysis. In contrast with the conventional view of power as held and wielded by one party, this study revealed that, in the Plunket nursing context, power is exercised in various and unexpected ways. Although the relationship between the mother and the nurse cannot be said to operate as a partnership, it is constituted in the nurses' discourses as a dynamic relationship in which the mother is actively engaged on her own terms. The effect of this is that it is presented by the nurses as a precarious relationship that has significant implications for the success of their work.

Abstract: A Grounded Theory approach was taken to explore the concept of the gap between theory and practice, whereby they are seen to be discrete entitites. For this study, the first phase of data collection was a series of computer mediated group discussions, and the second a number of individual interviews. In both sets of interviews participants were asked to describe how they experienced and managed differences they perceived between theory and practice in nursing. The participants referred to different types of theory relevant and central to effective nursing practice. The first was private theory; the second was formal theory and third was situational theory. For the students it was a conflict that produced uncomfortable emotions, distrust of others and personal self doubt. In an effort to reduce this discomfort the students sought an explanation for the differences between theory and practice, some of which challenged their key personal values. However, the most emotionally neutral explanation that also preserved the integrity of their key values was that there was a gap between the theory and the practice of nursing. The theory Negotiating Different Experiences has implications for the education of nurses in that personal knowledge and experiences must be incorporated in a programme of study and the feelings evoked by learning must be acknowledged as a catalyst to enhance learning. Further, the different forms of theory to which students will be exposed must be made explicit and nursing educators who must involve the individual student as an active partner in the mapping of a personalised programme, which includes the creation of individual assessment methods.

Abstract: The author takes a storytelling approach to describe her advancing practice as a registered nurse in a rural context. She adapted a theoretical 'reflective learning through storytelling' framework, from McDrury and Alterio (2002). The framework includes the concepts of reflection, learning, knowledge and experience which is related to professional practice and one's self.