Jean Watson’s Caring Theory ESSAY

Jean Watson’s Caring Theory ESSAY

Nursing professions is used to be considered following a physician’s order but after the arrival of nursing theories that are based on model of patient care was essentially biomedical and focus on treating diseases than the patient. The move towards theory based practice has made nursing career more valuable. A nursing theory is a collection of assumptions, concepts, definitions that derives from nursing model and plan useful phenomena by planning relationships between concepts. Jean Watson’s theory is known as human caring that is element of the developmental model, branch of the living tree of nursing theories by Charlotte Tourville and hypothesis that there is maturation towards orderly purpose. The theory of transpersonal caring is a middle range level of theory. According to Watson, nursing theory is defined as an imaginative grouping of knowledge, ideas and experience that are represented symbolically and seek to illuminate a given phenomenon. Nursing theories refer to knowledge and experience that forms the theoretical part of nursing practice and it consist a number of related subjects that form the grounded base of practice which are applied by nurses in a practical setting. The knowledge that forms a part of nursing theory is derived from experimental learning, research. Jean Watson’s theory is also described as a theory within a model of transpersonal caring. As mentioned in Watson caring science institute (WCSI), Jean Watson stated that, “a model of caring includes a call for both art and science which offers a framework that embraces and intersects with art, science, humanities, spirituality, and new dimensions of mind body spirit medicine and nursing evolving openly as central to human phenomena of nursing practice” (Watson, 2006). The caring theory has to be read, study and research but the person has to experience it to understand what it is as a result the caring model is “both an invitation and an opportunity to interact with the ideas, experiment with and grow within the philosophy, and living it in personal and professional life” (Watson, 2006). Human caring theory focuses on caring for purpose of wholeness of humanity, environment, and preserving human dignity. The caring model overall explains that nurses have a critical role in nourishing and sustaining human caring.

            Jean Watson was born in West Virginia and moved to Boulder in 1962 to attend university of Colorado. She earned her bachelor of science in nursing and psychology and continued to her master’s degree in psychiatric mental health nursing. She also did Ph.D. in education psychology and counselling (Peterson, 2008). The Human Caring theory developed in 1979 after war in Vietnam and there was a debate on equal right for women because at the time majority of women were in nursing and society considered it was an obligation of women to take care of the sick and nurture. Women were fighting for their rights to be paid equally and for nursing profession to advance in the medical field. Jean Watson developed her theory to promote nursing as a profession that brings meaning and different health profession. The main element of Watson’s theory contains ten carative factors, transpersonal caring relationship, and caring occasion/caring moment.

Watson conceived her Theory of Human Caring while she was teaching at the University of Colorado in 1975 to 1979 (Hernandez, 2009). It evolved from her personal views on nursing and merged with her learning and experience from her doctoral studies in education, clinical and social psychology. With the publication of her first book, Jean Watson developed the initial ideas of her theory and came up with 10 “carative” factors. Her actual theory was published in 1985, after which she further developed the corresponding nursing curriculum. In those years, Watson also extensively traveled in Asia and Australia while practiced. The prevailing influences in the nursing field at the time were those of Carl Rogers, Florence Nightingale and Leininger. Main psychological influences emanated from Maslow, Giorgi, Johnson and Koch. The major thought influences in the 70s were feminism, quantum physics, wisdom tradition, Eastern philosophy, the New Ate and metaphysics (Reed, Shearer and Nicolle, 2003).

Description of the Theory

The Theory of Human Caring

            Its main concept is transpersonal human caring, best understood within the ancillary concepts of life, illness and health (Fawcett, 2005). It defines human life as “spiritual-mental-physical being-in-the-world,” traversing continuously in time and space. Illness is not always a disease, but can also be a state of turbulence or disharmony in a person’s inner self, whether in the conscious or unconscious level. And health is the unity and harmony of the mind, body and the soul. Transpersonal human caring and caring transactions refer to scientific, professional, ethical, aesthetic, creative and personalized giving and receiving behaviors and responses between nurse and patient. These interactions allow them to experience each other via physical, mental and spiritual paths or a combination of these paths. From these, it can be gleaned that the precise goal of nursing is to help the patient gain a higher degree of harmony in mind, body and soul. That harmony produces self-knowledge, self-respect, self-healing, and self-care processes (Fawcett, 2005).

The 10 Clinical Caritas

            These are humanistic-altruistic system of values; faith-hope; sensitivity to oneself and others; helping-trusting and human care relationship; expressing positive and negative feelings; a creative problem-solving caring process; transpersonal teaching-learning; a supportive, protective, and/or corrective mental, physical, social, and spiritual environment; assistance to human needs; and existential-phenomenological-spiritual forces (Fawcett, 2002). These later evolved into 10 clinical caritas: loving-kindness and equanimity, authentic presence, spiritual practice and transpersonal self, a helping-trusting relationship, presence and supportiveness to the expression of positive and negative feelings, creative use of oneself in caring-healing practice, genuine teaching-learning experience to evident unity of being, healing environment in all levels, assistance with basic needs, and openness to spiritual mysteries and existential dimensions in one’s own life (Chinn and Cramer, 2008).

The improvements in health care system have placed a burden on the nurse’s workload and responsibilities. Along with this burden, nurses have often disregarded their caring attitude when faced with taxing situations. Jean Watson, famous for her Theory of Human Caring, wants the nurses to learn to cope with the complexities arising in every circumstance and to find ways of preserving their caring practice. The aims of this paper are the following: to utilize the synthesized literature regarding Jean Watson’s theory in order to evaluate its relevance to my personal experience; to utilize the theory to guide client-centered care and provide its implications to my future nursing practice.

Literature Review             Jean Watson views caring as the most valuable attribute nursing has to offer to humanity, yet caring has received less emphasis than other aspects of nursing over time (Watson, 2006). She believes that the disease might be cured but illness would still remain because without caring, health is not fully attained (Watson, 2006). Caring is the essence of nursing and it connotes responsiveness between the nurse and the patient (Watson, 2006). The ten carative factors, transpersonal caring relationship and the caring occasion constitute the elements of the Theory of Human Caring (Watson, 2006). In a study done by Ryan (2005) states that the nurses who were involved in her research have all agreed that they adopted and enact the caring theory in their everyday practice despite the obstacles that envelops them. The common theme found in the articles and was also emphasized in the theory are the use of effective communication and the nurse’s “caring moments” spent with the patients (Watson, 2006). Watson defined “caring moments” contact between patient and the nurse and the impact of the nurse to the patient that can produce a threatening or

Jean Watson’s Caring Theory ESSAY