ANS. Advances in nursing science
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The tension between power and caring in nursing is evident through the volume of nursing literature related to power and powerlessness and through nurses' discomfort with notions of power. A dialectical examination of the concepts of power and caring reveals that at one level they appear to be polar opposites. Additional layers of the dialectic reflect different relationships between power and caring until they are seen as intertwined and mutually generative concepts in an approach to caring labeled "empowered caring".
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This investigation answered the question, What meaning do parents give to the decision to authorize or to withdraw or forgo authorization of life-sustaining treatment for a child? Using an exploratory design, the author interviewed 20 families who had faced this decision in the prior 6 to 12 months. From content analysis, parents' essential meaning was experienced through their sense of self, their being, and an ethic of responsibility. Parents' decisions reflected values regarding the eight key themes of life, pain and suffering, quality of life, not self, respect for person or best interest, family, faith and nature, and technology.