This article focuses on Swedish nurse leaders and is aimed at achieving a more complete and differentiated understanding of what constitutes caring in the perioperative culture as well as their knowledge and responsibility for the development of caring. Interviews with open-ended questions were conducted with 10 nurse leaders, in which they described their experiences of developing perioperative caring. The interpretation process was based on Gadamer's philosophy of hermeneutics. The findings indicate that developing a perioperative caring culture is a struggle to retain sight of the patient, a process that includes the following 6 phases: (1) when the nurse leaders understood perioperative caring as a process, the nurse's and patient's shared world became obvious to them; (2) safeguarding the patient's position as a unique human being; (3) safeguarding the nurse's welfare by creating a compassionate atmosphere; (4) promoting an idea means never giving up; (5) attaching importance to being trustworthy; and (6) being involved in a dynamic interaction, comprising communion and reciprocity. The most important goal of nursing leadership is to safeguard the welfare of the suffering patient and the relationship between the nurse leader and nursing staff, based on the motive of caritas derived from the idea of humanistic caring. 

AIM: The aim of this study was to describe patients' experience of the perioperative dialogue. METHOD: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 18 patients, seven men and 11 women aged 20 to 76 years, with whom perioperative dialogues had been held. Data were collected and analysed according to grounded theory. FINDINGS; A core category: 'making time for me'; two main categories: 'comforting me' and 'becoming involved'; with three subcategories each: 'easing my mind by talking with the nurse', 'instilling faith within me', and 'having confidence in the nurse'; and 'being considered a resource', 'establishing a sense of communion', and 'making me feel that I am a human being', emerged from the data. The time with the nurse was experienced as comforting and made the patients feel involved in the perioperative procedures. When the nurse made time to talk with them they felt eased, were made more confident and gained faith in the success of their operation. When the patients were considered to be a resource, they felt that they were unique human beings, and this helped to establish a sense of communion with the nurses. CONCLUSION: The perioperative dialogue allowed the patients time with the nurse and was experienced by them as having a positive effect on the healing process and recovery. 

This article is a synthesis of 2 qualitative studies focusing on patients', anesthetists', and operating-room nurses' experiences of the perioperative dialogue and employing grounded theory as the method of analysis. The aim of the synthesis was to achieve a new holistic understanding of health in the perioperative dialogue. The synthesis highlights the importance of being in communion in a continuous whole due to continuity of care for the creation of health in both patients and nurses.