Depth of knowing
All members of the professional groups interviewed agreed that nurses know most about the client. This they attributed to the fact that nurses spend more time with clients than any other members of the mental health care team. According to Rogers et al. (1993 ) the time nurses spend with clients is what makes nursing unique. Nurses agree that they do know more about the client than other health care team members, in relation to divining need. Yet, they also recognize that their knowledge is not necessarily of the in-depth or personal level that is suggested by others. They do not claim to understand what the patient is experiencing. In relation to understanding the patient’s experience, Nagel (1981), in discussing the nature of knowledge, stated that unless you are a bat you cannot possibly know what it is like to be one. It is possible to have an idea of what constitutes ‘batness’ through guessing or intuition, but this is a different order of knowing. People’s own experiences provide the basic material for their imagination, therefore it is very subjective and limited. A nurse who has not experienced mental illness personally cannot know what it feels like. Even if they themselves have experienced mental health problems they still cannot know what it feels like for that particular client. In this respect, it would seem that the nurse cannot be fully empathic, rather she/he has to be guided by the patient’s definition of what is needed from her/him. In any case, as Clarke (1996 p. 5) pointed out, ‘…how awful to be in the company of someone who understands you all the time’.