Caring in Nursing Practice

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Caring in Nursing Practice

• NPN 100
• Joyce Smith RN, BSN

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What is Caring?

• Central focus of nursing
• More difficult in todays fast pace health care
• Legalities of any aspect of health care has made
  the aspect of caring appear missing to the client
• Technology have made some things easier but has
  increased time spent away from the client
• We see many clients who remember the way it was
  25-30 years ago
• With these changes we must make sure that we hold
  the caring and compassion along side the
  knowledge

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Theoretical Views on Caring

• A universal phenomenon that influences the way we
  think, feel, and behave
• Studied from a variety of philosophical and
  ethical perspectives since the time of Florence
  Nightingale
• Patricia Benner
• Benner and Wrubel

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The Essence of Nursing and Health

• Madeleine Leininger (1978)
• Caring is
• Essential for well-being, health, growth,
  survival, and facing handicap or death
• Trans cultural perspective
• Caring is essential for health and survival
• Caring is expressed in different ways in many
  cultures

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Transpersonal Caring

• Jean Watsons theory of caring (1979, 1988a,
  1988b, 1995, 1999, 2003)
• Focuses on individuals and meaning for their
  quality of life
• Caring involves sensitivity, respect, and high
  moral and ethical commitment
• Places care before cure
• Caring becomes the ethical standard by which we
  measure nursing
• Caring preserves human dignity
• Caring is a choice
• Emphasis on nurse-patient relationship

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Swansons Theory of Caring

• A composite of three studies
• Defines caring as
• A nurturing way of relating to a valued other
  toward whom one feels a personal sense of
  commitment and responsibility
• A central nursing phenomenon

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Swansons Theory of Caringcontd

• Knowing
• Being with
• Doing for
• Enabling
• Maintaining belief

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Can You Learn Caring Behaviors?

• Some of you already do caring behaviors
• You may have learned as a part of your values and
  experiences
• As you continue as a student you may learn new
  and different ways to care for others
• You will improve those behaviors as you work
  toward being an expert nurse

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Providing Presence

• Person-to-person encounters
• Eye contact
• Body language
• Tone of voice
• Listening
• A positive and encouraging attitude
• must have and openness and understanding

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Comforting

• Provides both an emotional and physical calm
• The use of touch
• Doing for as you want done for yourself

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Touch

• Used as a comforting approach to reach out and
  communicate support
• Involves contact and noncontact
• Can be
• Task oriented
• Caring
• Protective to prevent an injury

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Listening

• Conveys full attention and interest
• Creates trust and communication
• Is not a task
• Involves reaching out to another
• Can be difficult at times

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Knowing the Patient

• A central aspect of nursing practice that
  develops in the everyday practical work of
  patient care
• The core of clinical decision making
• More than just collecting clinical data

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Spiritual Caring

• Spiritual health is achieved when a person finds
  a balance between life values, goals, and belief
  systems and those of others.
• Watson (1979) describes the caring relationship
  in a spiritual sense
• Spirituality offers a sense of connectedness.
• Intrapersonally, interpersonally, and trans
  personally

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Family Care

• Individuals experience life through relationships
  with others.
• Caring does not occur in isolation from a
  patients family.
• Family is an important resource.

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CHALLENGE OF CARING

• You may have decided to go into nursing because
  you care
• You will have the responsibility to maintain the
  caring nature of nursing
• Begin here by developing that relationship with
  other students and the carry that over into your
  career