Nursing theory provides a systematic way of looking at professional practice, describes what nursing is, guides what nurses do, and helps generate knowledge to direct the future of nursing. During the summer of 2007, the registered nurses at Kaweah Delta Health Care District selected Dr. Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring as the foundation for their professional nursing practice environment.
The essence of nursing is caring. Nurses must be committed to a professional caring-healing model that surpasses the transactional, impersonal, task-oriented clinical routines. The core principles of Human Caring Theory (Watson, 2008, p. 34) are:
- Practice of loving-kindness and equanimity
- Authentic presence: enabling deep belief of other
- Cultivation of one’s own spiritual practice – beyond ego
- “Being” the caring-healing environment
- Allowing for miracles
Watson, J. (2008). Nursing: The philosophy and science of caring (Rev. ed.). Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.
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