Empirical Foundation of a Comprehensive Understanding of Nurses Remaining in the Profession

The chapter explores examples of nurses’ expressions of their everyday experiences of caring for patients. For this aim, the empirical examples explored are drawn from interviews with registered nurses. They are presented under three headings: ‘peaks’ that registered nurses strive to achieve in everyday nursing care, ‘uphills’ that nurses persevere through to reach further, and ‘safeguards’ that nurses utilize in nursing care for the sick. The chapter’s exploration of the empirical examples draws on the selected concepts from phenomenological philosophy and philosophical phenomenology, as described in the previous chapter. They are used as analytical tools to explore nurses’ expressions of their everyday experiences. The suitability of the selected concepts to opening up the significance of a life view for remaining in the nursing profession will become evident when concrete empirical examples are explored and clarity emerges in the analysis.