Abstract
Background:
When patients need emergency or planned care at a surgical ward, they expect to be treated with dignity. Studies show that there is unnecessary suffering in care. Aim: The aim was to describe how nurses experience preserved dignity versus violated dignity in surgical practice. Method: The study had a hermeneutic design where Flanagan's critical incident technique was used for data collection. Data included 49 written stories about preserved and humiliated dignity and was analyzed using hermeneutic text interpretation.
Findings:
Human dignity emerges when nurses listen to patients. On the other hand, human dignity is violated when nurses are forced to see what they do not want to see. These are two aspects of dignity, and prerequisites for human dignity to be preserved within care. When a nurse allows the patients to tell their stories, and when nurses want to come close to the patients and are willing to accept the patients' trust, dignity is preserved. When nurses are rude to patients and make the patients invisible, and when nurses see the patients become humiliated at the end-stage of life, dignity may be violated. Conclusion: Dignity may emerge when the will and courage to be there for someone else is allowed to permeate the caring acts.