Jean Watson's Theory

Jean Watson's Theory

Jean Watson's Theory of Caring Model

The changes in the health care delivery systems around the world have intensified nurses' responsibilities and workloads. Nurses must now deal with patients' increased acuity and complexity in regard to their health care situation. Despite such hardships, nurses must find ways to preserve their caring practice and Jean Watson's caring theory can be seen as indispensable to this goal. Through this pragmatic continuing education paper, we will explore the essential elements of Watson's caring theory and, in a clinical application, illustrate how it can be applied in a practice setting. Being informed by Watson's caring theory allows us to return to our deep professional roots and values; it represents the archetype of an ideal nurse. Caring endorses our professional identity within a context where humanistic values are constantly questioned and challenged (Watson 2002).

Upholding these caring values in our daily practice helps transcend the nurse from a state where nursing is perceived as “just a job,” to that of a gratifying profession. Upholding Watson's caring theory not only allows the nurse to practice the art of caring, to provide compassion to ease patients' and families' suffering, and to promote their healing and dignity but it can also contribute to expand the nurse's own actualization. In fact, Watson is one of the few nursing theorists who consider not only the cared-for but also the caregiver. Promoting and applying these caring values in our practice is not only essential to our own health, as nurses, but its significance is also fundamentally tributary to finding meaning in our work (Watson 2003).

First, we begin with an introduction of Dr. Jean Watson. Dr. Watson is an American nursing scholar born in West Virginia and now living in Boulder, Colorado since 1962. From the University of Colorado, she earned her undergraduate degree in nursing and psychology, her master's degree in psychiatric-mental health nursing, and continued to earn her Ph.D. in educational psychology and counseling. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Nursing and the Murchinson-Scoville Chair in Caring Science at the University of Colorado, School of Nursing and is the founder of the Center for Human Caring in Colorado. Dr. Watson is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and has received several national and international honors, and honorary doctoral degrees. She has published numerous works describing her philosophy and theory of human caring, which are studied by nurses in various parts of the world. The following is a summary of the fundamentals of the caring theory (Watson 2007).

Carative Factors

Developed in 1979, and revised in 1985 and 1988b, Watson views the “carative factors” as a guide for the core of nursing. She uses the term carative to contrast with conventional medicine's curative factors. Her carative factors attempt to “honor the human dimensions of nursing's work and the inner life world and subjective experiences of the people we serve”. In all, the carative factors are comprised of 10 elements:

Humanistic-altruistic system of value

Faith-Hope

Sensitivity to self ...