MARIANO MARCOS STATE UNIVERSITY
College of H College of Health Sciences
NURSING AS AN ART
Nursing is widely considered as an art and a science, wherein caring forms the
theoretical framework of nursing. Nursing and caring are grounded in a relational
understanding, unity and connection between the professional nurse and the patient.
As an art, the nurse enhances her ability to feel, sense, know and perceive care
delivery in a manner that demonstrate her mastery of the field’s practices. Nursin g
has empowered and transformed situations with the clients towards favorable health
changes.
Lesson 1. Concepts on Caring
Care- an essential human needs, necessary for the health and survival of all
individuals Caring- means that persons, events, projects and things matter to people
Caring Practice Models:
1. Mayerhoff-a process of relating to someone that involves development,
mutual trust and deepening and qualitative transformation of relationship
2. Benner- enables nurses to help clients recover from illness, to give
meaning to that illness and to maintain or reestablish connection
3. Leininger – the essence and central unifying and dominant domain that
distinguishes nursing from the other health disciplines
- she says that there can be no cure without caring, but that there may be
caring without curing.
4. Jean Watson’s Human Caring Theory
-She believes the practice of caring is central to nursing; it is the
unifying focus for practice.
Carative factors – nursing interventions related to human care, a guide Watson
refers to as the “Core of Nursing”.
The 10 Carative Factors:
1. Forming a humanistic-altruistic value system
2. Instilling faith and hope
3. Cultivating sensitivity to oneself and to others
4. Developing a helping- trust (human care) relationship
5. Promoting expression of positive and negative feelings
6. Using the problem- solving method
7. Promoting interpersonal teaching-learning
8. Providing supportive, protective or corrective mental, physical, sociocultural
and spiritual environment
9. Assisting with gratification of human needs
10. Allowing for existential- phenomenological forces
5. Kristen Swanson-identified five processes in caring
5 PROCESSES INVOLVED IN CARING
MARIANO MARCOS STATE UNIVERSITY
College of H College of Health Sciences
1. Knowing – striving to understand an event as it has meaning in the life of
the other
2. Being with- emotionally present to the other
3. Doing for – doing for the other as he or she would do for the self if it were
at all possible.
4. Enabling – facilitating the other’s passage through life transitions (birth,
death) and unfamiliar events
5. Maintaining beliefs – sustaining faith in the other’s capacity to get
through an event or transition and face a future with meaning
6. Simone Roach-caring is the center of all the attributes of nursing
-can be developed by being true to self, being real and being what a
person
is.
6 C’s of Caring:
1. Compassion-awareness of one’s relationship to others, sharing their
joys, sorrows and accomplishments
-participation in the experience of others
2. Competence-having the knowledge, judgment, skills, energy and
motivation to respond adequately to others within the demands of
professional responsibilities
3. Confidence-the quality that fosters relationship
-comfort with self, client and family
4. Conscience-sense of right and wrong; morals, ethics
5. Commitment-convergence between one’s desires and obligations
and the deliberate choice to act in accordance with them
6. Comportment-appropriate bearing, demeanor, dress and language
that are in harmony with a caring presence
-presenting oneself as someone whom respects others and demands
respect
COMPONENTS OF CARING IN NURSING PRACTICE
1. Providing presence – establishes reassuring presence, eye contact, body
language, voice tone, listening and having positive and encouraging attitude,
act together to create openness and understanding
MARIANO MARCOS STATE UNIVERSITY
College of H College of Health Sciences
2. Comforting – use of touch and the skillful and gentle performance of nursing
care procedures
3. Listening – paying attention to an individual’s words and tone of voice and
entering into his or her frame of reference
4. Knowing the client – core of the process by which nurses make clinical
diagnosis
5. Spiritual caring – offers a sense of interconnectedness intrapersonally (with
oneself), interpersonally (with others and environment) and transpersonally
(with unseen God or higher power)
6. Family Care – knowing the family as thoroughly as one knows the client
Levels of Care:
1. Primary level-focuses on the maintenance and promotion of health
a. health promotion
b. specific protection
2. Secondary level-focuses on early detection and treatment of diseases
3. Tertiary level-focus of care is on rehabilitation
-highly specialized care and equipment is needed
