The Courage to Surrender—Placing One's Life in the Hands of the Other

Abstract

In order to enable a dignified surrender, it is essential that the nurse anesthetist/anesthesiologist understands the patient's experience of loss of control.

Patient autonomy in a high‐tech care context—A theoretical framework

“…However, if suffering from weakness or even being unconscious, this is no longer possible and the patient needs to partly or fully surrender control to others. By comparison, the act of surrendering control in the high‐tech care environment of an operation theatre, in connection with total intravenous anaesthesia, has been shown to demand both preparation and courage from the part of the patient (Liebenhagen & Forsberg, ). Surrendering one's life into the hands of the other was shown to be a process of: preparing oneself to surrender, trying to retain control and accepting and surrendering/refusing to accept and not surrendering.…”

Constructing Recognition of the Others State of Surrendering- A Grounded Theory

“…Anaesthesia implies that the patient needs to construct a foundation for surrendering her/his life into the hands of an unknown Other [1]. Accordingly, surrendering requires that the patient has developed sufficient trust in the nurse anaesthetist (NA) and/or anaesthesiologist [1].…”

“…Accordingly, surrendering requires that the patient has developed sufficient trust in the nurse anaesthetist (NA) and/or anaesthesiologist [1]. Therefore, the assumption behind this study is that a moral approach from the NA where the patient's concerns are recognized is required to create trust on the part of the patient.…”

“…A review of previous relevant research indicates that the ability to stand by the patient is more or less restricted by external conditions such as; organisational demands on productivity, time constraints as a result of the need to adhere to the operating schedule and pressure from co-workers to perform [1,3]. This causes moral distress because of lack of input in decision making and being unable to perform in a manner that the NA believes is morally correct [3].…”

“…The NA's presence at the threshold of unconsciousness encompasses not only her/his skill but also ethics and knowledge of how to manage the patient's life from induction to emergence [3,5]. Thus, the NA embodies the foundation on which the patient places trust and reliance for her/his selfpreservation [1]. The extent to which the nurse stands-by the patient has a major influence on how the latter experiences the former's involvement in her/his care [8].…”