The Meaning of the Common World in Perioperative Nursing Care; A Hermeneutic Study

• Main Authors: Susan Lindberg, Gudrun Rudolfsson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-08-01
• Series: Humanities
• Subjects: common world; distinctive features; Gadamer; hermeneutics; perioperative
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/8/3/132

The aim of this study is to bring forth the meaning of the common world as it appears in perioperative nursing care. We employed the epistemological standpoints of preunderstanding, the hermeneutic spiral and fusion of horizons grounded in Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy as well as Eriksson’s Theory of Caritative Caring based on the ontology of caring science, where caritas is the basic motive and ethos of caring. Four hermeneutic spiral activities were performed, consisting of a mimetic presentation bearing the ontological depth of the common world, its distinctive features, the universal and lasting and finally, the truth inherent in the common world. The inherent truth of the common world is the prevalence of harmony, wholeness and the idea of love, mercy and reverence for human dignity. The common world brings ethics to existence, achieved by the word of honour, which in its true being makes visible the universal and ontological horizons of a common reality. The common world is the creation of a hermeneutic movement inside each suffering human being, where the boundless life-giving time represents the inhabited movement of time, like coming home.