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This paper is a written version of a talk given at the 19th International Philosophy of Nursing conference to honour the contributions of Dr. John S. Drummond, nurse and philosopher, to an ongoing and collective project we could call 'thinking nursing'. Over the course of his career, John Drummond published a series of essays, building on his reading of the works of continental philosophers such as Nietzsche, Lyotard or Deleuze, that draw us to nursing as a matter of concern, and that through their incisive analyses, help us to pay attention to the changes that are going on with nursing now. Though this essay began as a way to mark the death of John Drummond, and to pay tribute to his work, we also find that our return to his texts is like other experiences of return - the pleasure of experiencing something anew, as if for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much research has been dedicated to describing the ethical and communicative conditions of the encounter between a health care professional and a patient, in fact we know very little of the encounter itself, nor of the concept of the identity of the subjects they implicitly fall back upon. By contrast, in this paper we want to start from the fundamental question: what happens when two people meet in a patient's room? How do we take hold of the uncertainty and unpredictability in every new encounter? To address this lack we turn to the work of the French Philosopher Jean Luc Nancy and his notion of the singular and its importance for the encounter in the healthcare setting. Nancy examines the philosophical presuppositions inherent in the ways we speak of human identity. We explain his analysis of 'together' or 'with', and of 'singularity'. Then we apply his idea of singular identity to shed a new light on the encounter mentioned above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of life and well-being of older patients in chronic care facilities is often determined by their relationships with nurses. The authors developed and tested a scale to assess patients' views of what matters most when relating to nurses. Based on the humanistic nursing theory by Paterson and Zderad (1988), 69 items were created and tested with a sample of 40 patients, resulting in refinement of a scale with 24 items. This scale was factor analysed on responses from 249 patients residing in five facilities in Ontario, Canada. The Humanistic Relationship Importance Scale demonstrated strong internal consistency, stability, and reliability with a five-factor solution (α = .87). Construct validity was supported through factual identification. This scale is a valid measure of patients' perspectives of a nurse-patient relationship in chronic care and can be used to measure health professionals' relationships with their older patients and evaluate interventions to enhance relational care.