ABSTRACT
Many nurse scientists consider caring to be the core concept of nursing practice. This article describes the caring process that occurs when a nurse and a client interact in a nursing care situation. This interactional process has five integrating phases: co-presence, experience-sharing, caring acts, caring-perception, and mutual care-receiving. The authors provide a specific example that illustrates this caring process. The difficulties inherent in the caring process relate to one, or a combination of, three factors: the nurse, the client, and/or the circumstances. Nurses must be cognizant of the client's expression of subtle clues that indicate the need for caring. They also need to learn to recognize their own personal signals that might prevent them from engaging in the caring process. For caring, in its full context, can only occur when nurses know how to care for themselves. Nurses face unpredictability and challenges in their practice on a daily basis. In order to promote caring they must learn to promote an environment that nurtures this process. The authors discuss the essential characteristics of a favorable caring environment and present the conditions that can enhance quality nursing. The challenges that caring nurses face are counterbalanced by the value they attribute to this basic human need and the profound human benefits that caring brings.
Subject(s)
Empathy , Models, Nursing , Nurse-Patient Relations , Nursing Care , Humans , Philosophy, NursingABSTRACT
The concept of caring evokes many images and experiences, interpersonal caring, professional caring, caring for and being cared for. In this article, we explore several conceptualizations of caring as proposed by significant philosophers and nurse scientists. The philosophical perspective of caring can be presented by two basic assertions: "Being is relating" and "Being is caring". Conceptions of caring advanced by nurse scientists can be grouped according to four epistemological models: ethnographics, humanist, feminist and phenomenological. We also present a conceptual model of caring inspired by symbolic interactionist theory. This model describes and explains caring as a psychosocial relational process based on interaction, significant or meaning, interpretation and action. These notions help us understand this essential human phenomenon situated at the heart of the nursing profession.
