Current circumstances provide caring and nursing for a rethink due to the fact that the two professions are intertwined both definitively and by way of implementation. As such, caring pertains to the exhibition, as well as the feeling of empathy and concern for others, especially with regard to overall human wellbeing. While exhibiting compassion, requisite actions should be implemented with reference to the nursing and medical fraternities in general. Dr. Jean Watson’s caring theory, well known in the medical and specifically the nursing fraternity, provides three core elements with reference to enhanced health and nursing care. These three basics are occasional caring moment, transpersonal caring relationship, and present curative factors.
Due to the fact that a majority of healthcare systems are undergoing core administrative restructuring, there is the potential possibility of ‘dehumanizing’ patient health and mental care. Consequently, if to maintain the idea that caring is the core basis of nursing, the nursing fraternity at large will have to make conscious efforts towards preserving pertinent human caring within not only their clinical application/practice, but also in the educational, research and administrative aspects of nursing care. This provides a need for maintaining adequate nursing care as part of the larger medical fraternity’s heritage with an input from the aforementioned aspects. According to Anne Boykin, Simone Roach and Madeleine Leininger, their caring theories can provide fundamental input (Watson, 2001).
With the dynamic nature of existing global healthcare delivery systems portending to changing contexts, the nursing fraternity has witnessed an increase in workloads, as well as core responsibilities and duties. Hence, there is a need for nurses to deal with existing patient’s complexity and acuity in accordance with the prevailing healthcare contexts. Furthermore, there is the fact that despite enduring complicated situations, the nurses must also find other means of preserving their pertinent care practice with a glance to the aforementioned Dr. Watson’s caring theory, which is pertinent to this goal. The application of this theory allows the nursing and major medical fraternity to return to its foundation/ professional basis and values by way of representing an ideal nurse archetype. For this reason, caring endorses the nursing professional identity considering whether humanistic values are ideally and constantly challenged and questioned with the aim of further enhancement of overall care.
When carried out on a daily basis, such pragmatic care and health provisions enhance the transcendence of nursing. It means that ordinary job turns into a much more satisfying and meaningful profession. Hence, Watson’s caring theory not only allows the nursing fraternity to practice general caring, but also entails the provision of compassion with the aim of alleviating both the patients’ and their families’ suffering. It further goes towards enhancing the faster recovery/healing as well as preserving the patients’ dignity with the additional role of contributing to the nursing fraternity’s greater self-actualization. Delving not only into the role of the patient as the receiver of the care, the theory further perfectly focuses on the caregiver who is a relevant figure of the healthcare system. As it was mentioned above, three core elements define this theory, and each of these essentials is pertinent to the overall effectiveness of patient’s health and mental wellbeing (Beauchamp, 2009).
Furthermore, carative factors pertain to the guiding principles of core nursing. Its contrastive features are portrayed as opposed to current conventional carative factors. Their main difference consists in the fact that they aim at honoring the present human dimensions with respect to nursing work (the profession), as well as the patients’ inner lives and subjective experiences. Ten elements are present within this facet i.e. a system value based on humanistic altruism; the existence of faith and hope; an increased self-sensitivity and perception of others; the enhancement of human care relationships, which are both helpful and based on trust; the expression of actual feelings (both positive and negative); as well as the formation of creative processes in accordance with problem-solving in care, learning, and teaching based on transpersonal interactions.
In addition, nursing assistance should be provided with regard to human needs. It involves the acknowledgement of prevailing existential-phenomenological spiritual forces, and the provision of protective, supportive and corrective environments critical towards greater spiritual, societal, mental and physical wellbeing. Since a spiritual essence is an important factor to consider, there should be a discernible focus on the aspect of care dealing with moral values with reference to both the provider and receiver. This entails greater accountability in order to enhance the nursing fraternity in virtue of evidence-based plans rested not only upon trend analysis, but also upon the quantification of impacts resulting from safety and quality of care. With regard to transpersonal caring relationships, there is the presence of moral commitment, especially towards both enhancing and protecting human dignity because care is consciously communicated with respect to honoring and preserving the patient’s embodied spirit (McGraw, 2002).
It is apparent that the nurses’ caring connection and consciousness potentially have healing capability, as particular perception, intentional connection and experience are gained. Highlighting the uniqueness of both the nurse and the patient, it becomes obvious there is an enhanced form of mutuality between these two parties. They cooperate in search of wholeness and meaning, and perhaps for the sake of existent spiritual transcendence of suffering. After overcoming one’s ego, there is a deeper reach into the spiritual connections existing with the aim of promoting the patients’ healing and overall comfort. The above ideas, when put into practice, aim at enhancing, protecting and preserving a person’s humaneness, dignity and inner harmony/ peace, as well as wholeness. What is more, the aspect of Caring Occasion/Caring Moment elucidates the presence of a conducive environment critical towards achieving greater human caring.
Both the caregiver and receiver are influenced by the existing caring factors, specifically by way of the actions and choices made. Due to the presence of both parties’ spirits within the event, the ‘transpersonal aspect’ is gained, hence expanding the limitations of human openness as well as human capabilities. Viewing nursing as an art entails the strive towards aiding a patient to find meaning (of life), while in sickness and suffering; hence the ability to either promote or restore his/her harmony (physical, mental and spiritual). Accordingly, the Code of Ethics for Nurses alludes to the fact that a patient’s overall care enables him/her to live with as much emotional, physical, spiritual, mental and social wellbeing as possible (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2001).
Caring can be conditionally divided into four phases: caring about the patient, taking care of the patient, care giving, and care receiving. First phase involves the recognition of existing ailments in a patient; thus, admission and primary care giving are provided among other related medical services. Second phase entails the nurses’ responsibility for enhancing the patient’s environment, medication and general sense of wellbeing with the aim to provide the best possible attitude crucial for quick recovery. Third phase of care giving is when interpersonal collaboration, as well as teamwork get wholly ingrained owing to provision of critical input by different specialists/experts. With such pertinent provision of inter-professional healthcare, the different teams involved make an improvement towards wholesome wellbeing and health of the patient.
There can be different reaction to the constant patient’s needs, where the patient-doctor relationship may be conflictual; therefore, such situations demand taking drastic measures. The last phase is connected to the assessment of the intervention’s success rate, so that it provides a distinctive aspect of the enhanced patient-caregiver relationship, as well as ethics of care. Transparency is thus achieved through frank and open-minded discussions, where the patient is provided with a vivid case scenario regarding his/her medical condition. Beyond that, there is the aspect of interdisciplinary collaboration, as provided through evidence-based planning care, with both safety and quality care being impactful in given case scenarios. Cultural responsiveness is crucial, as showcased in the need for greater enhancement of spiritual, mental and physical wellbeing. It can be explicated by the fact that different cultures have varying methods of dealing with human illness/lack of health and wellbeing.
Distractions, as well as individual fatigue, do compromise patients’ safety since the caregivers are unable to adequately dispense their duties. Furthermore, due to the requisite component of patient-caregiver interpersonal relationships, any negative influence on the caregivers’ part compromises the overall quality of care provided. Considering the fact that various ailments require different strategies of treatment, necessitating specialized input, there is the need for improvement of communication, as well as the involvement of pertinent collaboration strategies critical for not only faster recovery, but also adequate and conducive patient stay, while under medical care. The two strategies are especially crucial for enhancing safety, health and interaction of various facets of medical and health care provision (Watson, 2002).
In conclusion, various fundamentals do influence the overall success rates of patient recovery since patient-centered care provision remains paramount to faster and effective medical treatment, care and recovery. On the grounds of health care provision and by way of enhanced collaboration, as well as input and experience gained from evidence-based practice (as rooted in the quantification of impacts on safety and quality), varying trend analysis may be utilized in order to get the best knowledge concerning health care of miscellaneous patients.
