Caring and the professional practice of nursing
by Teresa Vance, RN
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Caring and nursing have always been thought of synonymously. Most individuals choose nursing as a profession because of their desire to care for other individuals. Caring as a central concept has led to the development of several caring theories. Two well known theories were developed in the 1970’s, Leininger’s Theory of cultural care and Jean Watson’s Theory of human caring (McCance, McKenna, Boore 1999).
Jean Watson defines caring as a science. She states; Caring is a science that encompasses a humanitarian, human science orientation, human caring processes, phenomena, and experiences. Caring science includes arts and humanities as well as science. A caring science perspective is grounded in a relational ontology of being-in-relation, and a world view of unity and connectedness of all. Transpersonal Caring acknowledges unity of life and connections that move in concentric circles of caring-from individual, to others, to community, to world, to Planet Earth, to the universe. Caring science investigations embrace inquiry that are reflective, subjective and interpretative as well as objective-empirical; Caring science inquiry includes ontological, philosophical, ethical, historical inquiry and studies. In addition, caring science includes multiple epistemological approaches to inquiry including clinical and empirical, but is open to moving into new areas of inquiry that explore other ways of knowing, for example, aesthetic, poetic, narrative, personal, intuitive, kinesthetic, evolving consciousness, intentionality, metaphysical-spiritual, as well as moral-ethical knowing. Caring science is an evolving new field that is grounded in the discipline of nursing and evolving nursing science, but more recently includes other fields and disciplines in the Academy, for example, Women/Feminist studies, Education, Ecology, Peace Studies, Philosophy/Ethics, Arts and Humanities, Mindbodyspirit Medicine. As such, caring science is rapidly becoming an Interdisciplinary Transdisciplinary field of study. It has relevance to all the health, education human service fields and professions (Watson 2003). Cont'd Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 | 