Social Arenas of Caring Practice

There is conflict between the views projected by nurses and by policy directives about what constitutes care and caring. While there is a plethora of works on the conceptualization of care and caring, the influence of discourse remains unexplored. There is a small number of studies from the perspective of social constructionism, but very few take a Foucaultian- influenced analysis to identify the prevailing discourses and their power in the socially constructed situation of care and caring. This work explores the discursive roots of the current debate and shows how the power associated with the discourses of each social arena have shaped nursing practice. The findings are drawn from a grounded theory project using situational analysis. A total of 22 one-on-one interviews were completed with 14 community-based practitioners. The analysis revealed the social construction of four distinct arenas, each containing differing constructs of a caring nurse. Each specifically constructed social arena had associated discourses, to which it aligned. It revealed the conflicts between the four social arenas, the negotiation that took place, and how these conflicts and negotiation both gave power and repressed the differing world views of a caring nurse. The paper shows how alignment to discursive positions constructed three distinct senses of care.