What caring means to geriatric nurses.

Caring is the major concept in nursing. The purpose of this study was to describe the meaning of caring for nurses caring for elderly patients. Parse' s phenomenology was addressed in the research design, which included four steps: participant selection, dialogical engagement, extraction-synthesis, and heuristic interpretation. By stratified sampling, 30 nurses who worked in medical-surgical wards in a general teaching hospital were selected as participants. Dialogical engagement was completed through in-depth, tape-recorded interviews on the open question, " What is the meaning of caring for you as a provider of care to the elderly? ". Data were interpreted by process of Parse' s phenomenology, which included extracting the essence, synthesizing the essence, formulating a proposition, extracting concepts, and structuring the meaning. The meaning of caring for nurses engaged in caring for the elderly was: " Through the initiative deliberation from sincerity, the nurse is to dedication by the empathy and tolerance". The core concepts of caring were: deliberation, initiative, sincerity, tolerance, empathy, and dedication. It should develop and apply the caring concept and theory actively to geriatric nursing care.