Intertwining caring science, caring practice and caring education from a lifeworld perspective—two contextual examples

This article describes how caring science can be a helpful foundation for caring practice and what kind of learning support that can enable the transformation of caring science into practice. The lifeworld approach is fundamental for both caring and learning. This will be illustrated in two examples from research that show the potential for promoting health and well-being as well as the learning process. One example is from a caring context and the other is from a learning context. In this article, learning and caring are understood as parallel processes. We emphasize that learning cannot be separated from life and thus caring and education is intertwined with caring science and life. The examples illustrate how an understanding of the intertwining can be fruitful in different contexts. The challenge is to implant a lifeworld-based approach on caring and learning that can lead to strategies that in a more profound way have the potential to strengthen the person's health and learning processes

The perspective of patients on their experience of powerlessness.

Although self-determination is a key issue in empowerment, the perspective of patients on their experience of empowerment has been poorly investigated. The authors have attempted to understand better what the process of empowerment means to patients by investigating the situations and feelings of powerlessness from which a process of empowerment might evolve. They conducted 40 interviews of patients with various chronic conditions and looked for the commonalities in their experiences of powerlessness. Their findings show that powerlessness extends well beyond strictly medical and treatment-related issues, as the study participants all expressed or demonstrated to have at some point or another experienced a distressing feeling of insecurity and a threat to their social and personal identities. The authors therefore suggest that an empowering provider-patient interaction should address these issues by providing for reassurance and opportunities for self-exploration as a prerequisite to participation and self-determination in treatment-related decisions.Journal ArticleResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe