Maintaining Patient Hopefulness: a Critique

It has been proposed that maintaining patient hopefulness is or should be a central nursing duty, and within the nursing literature the maintenance of patient and family hope is generally presented as an unproblematic ‘good thing’. However, here it is argued that hope cannot bear the claims made on its behalf. The concept is variously interpreted and this variation might indicate that hope cannot sustain a real or technical definition. Further, hope may be confused or entangled with teleological assumptions, and this complicates use of the concept in healthcare systems which prize scientific forms of evidence-informed decision-making. As currently understood hope cannot be situated within a sustainable scientific theory and nurses are therefore advised to distance themselves from the more extravagant claims that are made regarding the concept.