Little research has been done on the phenomenon of caring. Although health professionals express concern about the care they provide to patients, caring has not received the same degree of scholarly inquiry as the study of cures. This study attempts to shed some light on the phenomenon of caring from the patient's perspective. The primary purpose was to discover those experiences that hospital patients perceived to be caring and non-caring. The secondary purposes were to (1) determine if there was a gender difference in patient perception of caring and non-caring experiences, (2) determine if severity of illness was a variable in how patients perceive caring and non-caring, and (3) discover if patients perceive a difference in caring and non-caring in the past five or more years. This study followed an interpretive paradigm of research and analysis. It attempted to both describe human experiences as it appeared, and to understand the significance of the experience to the individual. The interpretation and analysis of findings are presented using metaphors (Chapter 5). Five metaphors are used to describe patients expressions of caring, and four are used to express patients descriptions of non-caring. All patients had some thoughts and ideation about loss, death and dying, regardless of their diagnosis. Findings suggest that nurses may underestimate the patient's desire for frequent surviellance. Care providers who demonstrated a holistic view of the patient and an understanding of the patient's personal needs were perceived to be caring. The emergence of a hierarchy of nursing care and medical care needs are suggested by the data. Patients appear to have a different hierarchy for nursing than for medical care. Although this was not part of the research question, it seems important and worthy of further research.