Jean Watson is a caring and compassionate individual who has devoted her life’s work to the phenomena of human caring within the nursing practice (Watson, 2016a). Her Theory of Human Caring is a middle-range theory that focuses on the spiritual experience between the healthcare professional and the patient that can often be overlooked by medical science (Watson, 2016a). Further discussion will reveal how Watson’s theory facilitates healing through the caring practices that nurses perform daily. Her theory focuses on strengthening the bond between the nurse and patient and has also introduced the clinical Caritas process into the nursing profession.
Jean Watson obtained her initial nursing degree …show more content…
81). In her early theory development, she credited her thinking to Carl Rogers, whose works explained how nurses are not manipulators, but professionals attempting to understand patients’ emotions and assist healing in an individualized holistic manner (Alligood, 2014, p. 81). Additional early influences also included, “feminist theory, Jungian psychology and Maslow’s psychological concept of self-actualization” (Butts & Rich, 2015, p. 257). Watson recognizes the roots of her theory are based on a phenomenological, existential, and profound introduction from the sciences and humanities and in addition philosophical and scholarly theory, transcendentalism, phenomenology, quantum physics, wisdom conventions, and Buddhism (Watson, 2012). She attributes her theory’s transformation in recent times on principles from many theorists such as Newman, Rogers, Nightingale, Peplau, Leininger, Henderson, and the work of nursing philosopher Gadow (Alligood, 2014, p.