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Essay on Jean Watson's Human Caring Theory
Jean Watson's Theory of Human Caring consists of the following tenets:
- Forming and acting from humanistic and altruistic values.
- Enabling and sustaining faith and hope.
- Sensitivity to self and others.
- Seeking transpersonal connection.
- Promoting and accepting expression of positive and negative feelings and emotions.
- Engaging in caring process and creative, individualized problem solving.
- Promoting transpersonal teaching and learning.
- Attending to supportive, protective, and/or corrective mental/physical/societal/spiritual environment.
- Assisting with gratification of basic human needs, while preserving human dignity and wholeness.
- Allowing for, being open to, existential, phenomenological, and spiritual phenomena that cannot be explained scientifically through the Western mind of modern society.
Watson's theory of human caring is among the foundations of nursing thought, teaching, and practice. Her theory creates a balanced perspective in nursing education and practice by providing a framework for addressing the mind-body-spirit of nurse and client simultaneously during interactions. Traditional linear nursing process as it is widely taught and practiced and Western thinking styles are not easily adapted to Watson's theory of human caring. In her theory, Watson describes the basis or core of nursing as "those aspects of nursing that actually potentiate therapeutic healing processes and relationships; they affect the one caring and the-one-being-cared-for" (4, p. 50).
She uses the term trim to describe the tasks associated with nursing care and clarifies their importance in nursing practice: "`Trim' referred to the practice setting, the procedures, the functional tasks, the specialized clinical focus of disease, technology and techniques surrounding the diverse orientations and preoccupations of nursing. The `trim,' however, is in no way expendable. It is just that it cannot be the center of a professional model of nursing [the `core'] (4, p. 50).
Watson's theory has evolved since it was introduced in 1979. The concepts of core and trim are no longer discreet but have become a fluid whole of nursing practice.............
