Home-based nursing: An endless journey

The aim of this study was to explore metaphors for discovering values and norms held by nurses in home-based nursing care. Ten interviews were analysed and interpreted in accordance with a metaphor analytical method. In the analysis, metaphoric linguistic expressions and two entailments emerged, grounded in the conceptual metaphor ‘home-based nursing care is an endless journey’, which were created in a cross-domain mapping between the two conceptual domains of home-based nursing care and travel. The metaphor exposed home-based nursing care as being in constant motion, thereby requiring nurses to adjust to circumstances that demand ethical maturity. The study focuses on the importance of developing further theories supporting nurses’ expressions of their experiences of everyday ethical issues.