Nursing & Healthcare

Biography

Luigina Mortari is Dean of the Department of Human Sciences of the University of Verona. She is full professor in Epistemology of Qualitative Research. Her main research fields are: epistemology and qualitative methods in educational research, epistemology and qualitative methods in nursing research, the evaluative research in educational contexts, the practice of caring in educational settings

Research Interest

Care is today a widespread term, but its meaning is not clear. One evident fact is that caring is fundamental in life, given that, without caring, life could not flourish. Therefore it is essential achieve a valid theory of good caring that illuminates in its essence the entity of a human being and how it is necessary to take care of human existence. The lacking of a full and complete being that characterizes human life at the same time opens up to the being, to further not predefined existential possibilities; to exist means to be called upon to embody these possibilities. Giving body to the potentiality of our being requires care; therefore caring for life also means committing to achieve our potential for a fully human life, one that is worthy of being lived. To define the essential qualities of care in nursing involves to develop a discussion process capable of showing that care is not only an obligation that the subject has towards him/herself, but that there is a relational dimension of care, a dimension that is ontologically necessary, and since it is ontologically necessary to interpret cure in relational terms, caring for others has all the features of becoming an ideal of existence. In order to define this issue this presentation will present the line of a rigorous theoretical analysis recursively related to a rigorous empirical research. Through this it will be achieved a descriptive theory of caring based on well-pondered arguments and on the results of our investigation aimed.