their other responsibilities, for instance communication with
patients and next of kin.
Nurses working in community care, nursing homes and in
rehabilitation wards express that the fact that they are alone
with the patient in many situations forces them to take charge
in situations. To be alone with the patient gives an opportunity
to make independent decisions and actions. However, a
restriction in autonomy is connected with being alone if the
nurses have to take charge even when they do not have control
over the situation. To assess situations without being able to
confer with a physician or another nurse present at the time
requires both confidence about own knowledge (Freidson
2001) and a personal capacity (Rischel et al. 2008). These
findings imply that responsibilities are connected to a workplace
culture and to a situational understanding which is not
always possible to capture in a general qualification and
authorisation. The nurses have to gain experience and find
themselves in their nursing role (Arbon 2004).
The possibility to get to know the patient seems to give the
nurses in this study invaluable knowledge and a greater
opportunity to act autonomously and create holistic care both
towards an individual patient and groups of patients. Knowing
the patient gives grounds for clinical judgements in situations,
where some of the nurses expressed as a better understanding of
the patients’ total situation. These nurses demonstrate that
understanding of a professional knowledge base requires
interpretation of situations (Eraut 1994). According to Mantzoukas
and Watkinson (2007) this use of knowledge is
important to gain professional autonomy and the findings in
this study show that the relationship with patients is essential in
developing autonomous nursing practice.
In accordance with McParland et al. (2000), the participants
struggle to find what power they have or should have to
defend their patients. Some of the nurses express that their
close relationship with the patient makes it difficult to
cooperate with next of kin. The nurses strongly pronounce
that they know what is best for the patient because they know
the patient as a patient, while the relatives see it from their
point of view. While power imbalance previously has been
connected to physicians (Adamson et al. 1995) and hierarchical
structures (Willard 1996), the findings in this study
also indicate a power imbalance between the nurses and
patients and next of kin. The nurses seem to need support to
manage to strengthen the patients’ autonomy (Hewitt 2002,
Hallin & Danielson 2007). These findings connect to
Mantzoukas and Watkinson’s (2007) assumptions about
the importance of developing individual nurses to achieve
high degree of professional autonomy.
Besides creating holistic patient care, all the interviewees
emphasise that performing tasks is an essential part of their
autonomous nursing practice. Even if nursing tasks are
delegated or based on prescribed guidelines, the procedures
are described as the nurses’ ‘own’ and autonomy is described
as the necessity to know what to do when performing these
tasks. However, the nurses seem to connect their performance
to attributes that go beyond knowledge and skills
(Gardner et al. 2008), as well as to personal capacities (Arbon
2004, Rischel et al. 2008). The fear of unknown or
unexpected situations and for not mastering situations is
universal in the nurses’ descriptions and ‘to dare’ is an
expression of their personal capacity in such situations. These
findings suggest that personal autonomy, as part of the
individual patterns of competence, is important to consider in
clinical nursing practice. This is illustrated by the nurses who
discuss situations where they have to do tasks even if they do
not know quite how to perform them, because the tasks are
not part of their daily work and routines. Another illustration
is from the discussion about managing cardiac arrest in
surgery wards, where the lack of experience in real situations
makes it difficult, even if knowing how to do it is instilled. In
both these cases, the nurses have to rely on their personal
capabilities and being confident in situations seems to go
beyond knowing what to do