Theory of human caring: An application in nursing service and education

Abstract

As the world is changing in every second the health care system around the globe undergoes lots of reorganization. Values of nursing will only uphold when there is proper human caring. Watson‟s theory of human caring gives importance to the transpersonal relationship between the caregiver and the care recipient. Watson's humanistic, existential, and metaphysical conceptualization of human beings underpins her view of both the transpersonal caring relationship that is central to her theory and her conceptualization of health-illness. She sees human beings as beings-in-the-world with dimensions of mind-body-soul that, in health, exist in harmony. The factors which factors which make the Watson's theory unique among other nursing theories are it stresses the importance of the lived experiences of both client and nurse and it acknowledges the unique dimensions of mind-body-spirit. Also, it focuses on the use of clinical Caritas process and the role of spirituality in caring the patient. According to the theory of human caring, the curriculum should involve the knowledge of human behavior and human responses. As this theory gives equal importance to both client and the caregiver, there is a great chance for the nurses to improve themselves. In theory of human caring, she describes nursing as a human science discipline and art as well as an academic clinical profession. Watson also put forward two research methodologies for studying the theory, Descriptive –empirical phenomenological research method and Transcendental-poetic expression of phenomenology. Various studies and researches were conducted to check the applicability of the theory of human caring and a few of the studies are discussed in this paper.