Nursing, And Jean Watson's Theory Of Human Caring

As a child and into my teenage years, I’ve always dreamt about one day becoming a nurse. I would picture myself walking into the hospital wearing my bright blue scrubs, spending my days being able to care and heal individuals that were unwell and needed assistance. These dreams of mine had always been intact as I remember my parents and teachers asking me questions such as “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and “what’s a career that you would enjoy doing for the rest of your life?” Every time I was asked these questions I would answer with the response of a nurse. I initially thought when I was younger that my strong yearning for becoming a nurse came from the fascination I had about how the human body worked and the processes individuals …show more content…
These are ideals similar to Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring as Watson’s theory entails “nurses are deeply responsible for the lives of their patients and are the source of sustaining not only the humanity of their patients, but their own” (Watson, 2008). As an overall embodiment of the theory, the sole focus is looking at the patient at a whole. This means that the nurse should care about the patient’s mind, body, and spirit in order to maintain optimal health. This can be established by four major conceptual elements of Watson’s theory, which include: clinical caritas processes, transpersonal caring relationships, caring moment, and caring consciousness. The clinical caritas processes involve the promotion of faith, trust, love, hope, caring, selflessness, spirituality, energy, and understanding, which guide a nurse toward implementing caring behaviors in their own nursing practice. For instance one of Watson caritas states, “being present to, and supportive of the expression of positive and negative feelings as a connection with deeper spirit of self and the one being cared for ” (Watson, 2006). This is a similar practice that I have used throughout life as I try to acknowledge a person’s thoughts and encourage them to express how they are feeling. For instance in the first few weeks of clinical I have been making sure the patient’s are able to express their emotions whether it be just telling me their life story or telling me about how much pain they are in. It is then from there I can gain a better understanding of the patient. The second element of transpersonal caring relationship Watson said is to “move beyond ego self and radiate to spiritual, even cosmic, concerns and connections that tap into healing