A Critical Analysis of the Concept of Hope: The Nursing Perspective

The concept of hope has long been considered an important aspect of being human and has been discussed extensively in various areas of literature. As a concept, hope is an idea, it has an appeal that is intuitive across several disciplines such as social sciences and healthcare, psychiatry However, many different interpretations and conceptions of hope exist within these disciplines. In order to clarify the concept of hope as perceived by patients with a terminal illness, and to develop hope as an evidence-based nursing concept, 15 research papers have been reviewed. This is to make contributions to new knowledge and insights about hope to the relatively new field of nursing with a view of improving the quality of life of patients. A few critical attributes of the concept have been identified, spirituality, goals, comfort, caring, interpersonal relationships, control, expectation, and life review. Patients' hopes and goals are scaled down and refocused in order to live in the present and enjoy the time they have left with loved ones. An improved understanding of hope in healthcare by the nurses and other healthcare professionals will enable proper understanding of individual's experience of recovery process and identify effective support mechanism. The purpose of this work is to examine the concept of hope within the healthcare context, with a particular focus on hospital nursing as presented in the literature. The concept of hope is evaluated based on the work of Morse et al. , (2006) and the place of hope in some theoretical frameworks and nursing context was considered.