Nursing Theorist

Jean Watson is an American nurse theorist and nursing professor who is best known for her Theory of Human Caring. She is the author of numerous texts, including Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring. Wikipedia

Born: 1940, West Virginia Education: University of Colorado at Boulder

The Philosophy and Science of Caring

• Nursing is concerned with promotion health, preventing illness, caring for the sick, and restoring health.
• Nursing is a human science of persons and human health-illness experiences that are mediated by professional, personal, scientific, esthetic and ethical human care transactions
• She defined caring as a nurturing way or responding to a valued client towards whom the nurse feels a personal sense of commitment and responsibility. It is only demonstrated interpersonally that results in the satisfaction of certain human needs. Caring accepts the person as what he/she may become in a caring environment
• Carative Factors:
1. The formation of a humanistic-altruistic system of values
2. Instillation of faith-hope
3. The cultivation of sensitivity to one’s self and others
4. The development of a helping- trust relationship
5. The promotion and acceptance of the expression of positive and negative feelings.
6. The systemic use of the scientific problem-solving method for decision making
7. The promotion of interpersonal teaching-learning
8. The provision for supportive, protective and corrective mental, physical, socio-cultural and spiritual environment
9. Assistance with the gratification of human needs
10. The allowance for existential phenomenological forces