Sammanfattning
Care is the ?bread and butter" of nursing, but it is difficult to explain how this is put into practice to those outside the profession without confusing or trivialising the issue. Consequently, nurses receive no credit for the fact that in every patient contact they seek to create dialogue and offer care, in this way rendering this facet of their work invisible - resulting in lack of understanding and recognition. The article throws new light on care and dialogue using the analytical term ?connectedness". Discussion of how to create social connectedness is another way of talking about something akin to what nurses already do, and are aware of, but which they call giving care and being in dialogue. Anthropological methods and analyses, using a term such as connectedness, can help examine nursing practice from new angles, highlight different aspects of what nurses do and thereby give insight into what lies beneath care and dialogue.