“Paradoxing the Dialectic”

Abstract

Using the concepts of paradox and dialectics, this qualitative study examines the tension that contradictions bring to nurses’ narrative construction of their roles as caregivers. The nurses in the study reveal that they negotiate their roles as caregivers within the dialectical poles of closeness and distance in relation to their patients. The sexual harassment of nurses by their patients, however, serves to destroy this ability to move between these poles and instead calls for a single response—distance. This “paradoxing of the dialectic” changes the ability to negotiate between closeness and distance and presents nurses with a paradoxical set of decisions on how to cope with such harassment and maintain their role as caregivers. Implications for theory are discussed.