Abstract
Because the word 'care' is often used in nursing as a daily word and in polysemic fashion, usage of it needs to be organized, refined, and modified for inclusion of it as an academic term. In this paper, an attempt is made to clarify the meaning of the word 'care' by considering what specific meanings and roles those within the nursing discipline may assign this word, so that desirable nursing practice can be clearly explained. In reference to 'nursing care', nursing has been explained using everyday interpretations of the word 'care'. While discussing appropriate nursing, on the other hand, intangibles such as qualities required in those who do nursing care, etc. have been mentioned as crucial to making nursing care true nursing. For the past twenty years, there has been an unfortunate tendency to use the word 'human caring' as equivalent to nursing, and the word 'care' as a catch-all to conveniently indicate both the nature and the goodness of nursing, as a result of which the nature of nursing remains unclear. If in nursing the word 'care' is redefined in accordance with the continuing and evolving application of its previous usage in academic discipline, while avoiding discrepancies from practical wisdom, it would then be appropriate to define it as aid extended to advance the well-being and autonomy of each individual patient before us who lives wishing for health. Considering the current situation in which nurses care for multiple patients, it is not possible to discuss the entirety of desirable nursing if we rely solely on the word 'care'.
