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RUNNING HEAD: Jean Watson Theorist: Jean Watson July 20, 2011 John Bell Grand Canyon University NUR 502- Theoretical Foundations for Nursing Role and Practice Barbara Pate PhD, MPH, RN Introduction Jean Watson has played a chief role in determining the connection among nursing identity and holistic healing. She has favored the addition of a new vision of nursing process within the nursing profession (Philosophy of Nursing, 2011). The alterations in the health care systems around the world have increased nurse’s responsibilities and assignments.
Nurses must deal with patient’s increased acuity and difficulty in regard to their health care state. Even with such hardships, nurses must find ways to maintain their caring practice and Jean Watson’s caring theory can be seen as crucial to this goal. This paper will discover the essential elements of Watson’s caring theory and show how it can be applied in a practice setting. Being educated by Watson’s caring theory allows us to return to our deep professional values. It represents the model of an ideal nurse.
Caring supports our professional individuality within a setting where humanistic values are always tested. Sustaining these caring values in our daily practice helps excel the nurse from a position where nursing is observed as “just a job”, to that of a rewarding and satisfying profession. It not only lets the nurse practice the art of caring, to provide sympathy to ease patient’s and families’ grief and sorrow, and to promote their healing but it can also donate to increase the nurse’s own actualization (Philosophy of Nursing, 2011).
Watson is one of the few nursing theorists who also consider the caregiver. Supporting these caring values is not only vital to our own health as nurses but also contributes to finding meaning in our work. As nurses, we identify the significance of human caring as it relates to science, research, and promoting patients’ spiritual needs. Human conjunction at the foundation of every nurse-patient relationship builds trust, provides physical care, and results in a patient finding health or a peaceful death.
Jean Watson expresses the true spirit of nursing and what we aim to and teach others to be (Philosophy of Nursing, 2011). Description of theorist Jean Watson was born in a small town in West Virginia in the 1940s. She graduated from the Lewis Gale School of Nursing in Roanoke, Virginia in 1961. She continued her nursing studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, earning a B. S. in 1964, an M. S. in psychiatric and mental health nursing in 1966, and a Ph. D. n educational psychology and counseling in 1973 (Watson Caring Science Institute, 2011). She is the author of many books, including “The Philosophy and Science of Caring”. Watson is recognized for her Theory of Human/Transpersonal Caring. She currently holds an awarded chair at the University of Colorado. She is Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, formerly served as Dean of Nursing at the University Health Sciences Center, and is a Past President of the National League for Nursing (Watson Caring Science Institute, 2011).
Jean Watson generated the non-profit Watson Caring Science Institute in 2008 to expand her ideas (Watson Caring Science Institute, 2011). Jean Watson has been influenced by the author Eckhart Tolle, whose work focuses on the benefits of love-centered living. Tolle’s writing studies the idea that the human race is currently involved in a shift of consciousness, through realization that the self is already whole in the present moment.
Jean Watson is also influenced by the work of the HeartMath Institute, a research center directed by physicians. It centers on recent medical evidence that our emotions affect our health and well-being (Watson Caring Science Institute, 2011). Conclusion References Jean Watson. (2011). Philosophy of Nursing. Retrieved from http://currentnursing. com/ nursing_theory/Watson. html Jean Watson. (2011). Watson Caring Science Institute. Retrieved from http://www. watsoncaring science. org/j_watson/index. html.