Menneskelige grundtræk i sygeplejen

Title: Existentials in nursing
What does it mean to be human? What constitute human existentials? These are essential questions in clinical nursing where caring is primary and caring for the whole human being is seen as an ethical ideal. The aim of this paper is, from a phenomenological perspective, to get a deeper understanding of human existentials, in other words characteristics common to all human beings. Inspired by van Manen and others, we describe seven human existentials, space, body, time, relations, ambience, historicity/memory and mortality. We illuminate the meaning of these existentials with examples from phenomenological research and discuss their importance to clinical nursing. The discussion thus extends ‘van Manen’s four existentials’ space, body, time and relations that have gained increasing popularity in nursing research and nursing education. We conclude by proposing that a more human worldview is imperative in nursing practice and that insight in human existentials contributes to being a phenomenological clinician.