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CHAP TER

Kari Martinsen
1943 to Present

Philosophy of Caring

Herdis Alvsvåg

“Nursing is founded on caring for life, on neighbourly love, . . .
At the same time it is necessary that the nurse is professionally educated”
(Martinsen, 2006, p. 78).

1 year, while doing preparatory studies for university
Credentials and Background entry. Before embarking upon a university degree,
of the Theorist she specialized as a psychiatric nurse in 1966 and
Kari Marie Martinsen, a nurse and philosopher, was worked for two years at Dikemark Psychiatric Hospital
born in Oslo, Norway, in 1943, during the World War near Oslo.
II German occupation of Norway. Her parents were While practicing as a nurse, she became concerned
engaged in the Resistance Movement. After the war, about social inequalities in general and in the health
moral and sociopolitical discussions dominated home service in particular. Health, illness, care, and treat-
life, a home that consisted of three generations: a ment were obviously distributed unequally. She also
younger sister, parents, and a grandmother. Both par- became disturbed over perceived discrepancies be-
ents were economists who had been educated at the tween health care theories, ideals, and goals on the
University of Oslo. Her mother worked all of her one hand, and practical results of nursing, medicine,
adult life outside the home. and the health service on the other. She began to pose
After high school, Martinsen began her studies at questions about how a society and a profession must
Ullevål College of Nursing in Oslo, graduating in 1964. be constituted to support and aid the ill and the
She worked in clinical practice at Ullevål hospital for unemployed. One particularly poignant question was

Photo credit: Lars Jakob Løtvedt, Bergen, Norway.
Translators: Vigdis Elisabeth Brekke, Bjørn Follevåg, and Kirsten Costain Schou.

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