Jean Watson: Caring Science as Sacred Science

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Jean Watson’s Caring Theory Nurses’ responsibilities to their patients are continually changing with the times. Jean Watson formed the “caring theory” to convey the significance and emphasize nursing as a diverse health profession. Using the Jean Watson’s caring theory enables nurses to maintain their perspective on caring for patients when overwhelmed with increased acuity, responsibility and workload. With the increase of patients and their needs, nurses often replace the caring attitude with an attitude of arrogance and hurried tasks, leaving patients and family members with belief that nurses believe they are here just to perform a job. By applying the Watson caring theory in caring for patients, “it allows nurses 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” (Cara, 2003, p 2). Watson believes it is crucial that nurses apply caring values to their practice because it is essentially a byproduct in discovering the meaning of the nursing profession (Theory of Human Caring, n.d.). The foundation of this paper is to expound on the caring theory Jean Watson designed “to bring meaning and focus to nursing as a distinct health profession” (Cara, 2003, p 2). Description of the Theorist In the 1940’s, Jean Watson was born in West Virginia in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains. In 1961, graduated from the Lewis Gale School of Nursing, furthering her career at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1964, received a bachelor’s degree, in 1966 a Master’s degree in psychiatric and mental health nursing and in 1973, a Ph.D. in educational psychology and counseling. Throughout her professional career Watson has been the recipient of several awards and honors which include an International Kellogg Fellowship in

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