Central to all helping professions, and enables persons to create meaning in their lives.

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Caring
Definition
Central to all helping professions, and enables persons to create meaning in their lives.
Means that people, relationships, and things matter
Nursing Theories of Caring
Culture Care Diversity and Universality Theory (Leininger)
Based on transcultural nursing model
Transcultural nursing: a learned branch of nursing that focuses on the comparative study &
analysis of cultures as they apply to nursing and health-illness practices, beliefs, and values
Goal of Transcultural Nursing: to provide care that is congruent with cultural values, beliefs, and
practices
Cultures exhibit both diversity and universality
Diversity – perceiving, knowing, and practicing care in different ways
Universality – commonalities of care
Fundamental Theory Aspects – culture, care, cultural care, world view, folk health or well-being
systems
Theory of Bureaucratic Caring (Ray)
Ray’s theory focuses on caring in organizations (e.g. hospital) as cultures. The theory suggests
that caring in nursing is contextual and is influenced by the organizational structure.
Example: ICU had a dominant value of technological caring (i.e., monitors, ventilators,
treatments), Oncology unit had a value of a more intimate, spiritual caring (i.e., family focused,
comforting, compassionate). Furthermore, the meaning of caring was further influenced by the
role and position a person held. Staff nurses valued caring in terms of its relatedness to client,
while administrator valued caring as system related.
Spiritual –ethical caring influences each of the aspects of the bureaucratic system (political,
legal, economic,, educational, physiologic, social-cultural, and technological)
Caring, the Human Mode of Being (Roach)
Caring is the human mode of being, proposes that all persons are caring, and develop their
caring abilities by being true to self.
Develop the Six C’s of Caring in Nursing:
Six C’s of Caring in Nursing
Compassion
Awareness of one’s relationship to others, sharing their joys, sorrows, pain, and
accomplishments. Participation in the experience of another

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Competence
Having the knowledge, judgment, skills, energy, experience, and motivation to respond
adequately to others within the demands of professional responsibilities.
Confidence
The quality that fosters trusting relationships. Comfort with self, client, and family.
Conscience
Morals, ethics, and an informed sense of right and wrong. Awareness of personal responsibility.
Commitment
Convergence between one’s desires and obligations and the deliberate choice to act in
accordance with them.
Comportment
Appropriate bearing, demeanor, dress, and language, that is in harmony with a caring presence.
Presenting oneself as someone who respects others and demands respect.
Nursing as Caring (Boykin and Schoenhofer)
Suggests that the purpose of the discipline and profession of nursing is to know persons and
nurture them as persons living in caring and growing in caring.
Similar to Roach idea that all persons are caring.
Caring in nursing is “an altruistic, active expression of love, and is the intentional and embodied
recognition of value and connectedness”.
Theory of Human Care (Watson)
Human caring in nursing is not just an emotion, concern, attitude, or benevolent desire. Caring is
a moral ideal of nursing whereby the end is protection, enhancement, and preservation of
human dignity.
Theory of Caring (Swanson)
Caring involves 5 processes:
Process Definition Sub dimensions
Knowing
Striving to understand an event as it has meaning
in life of the other
Avoiding assumptions
Centering on the one cared
Assessing thoroughly

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Seeing cues
Engaging the self of both
Being With Being emotionally present to other
Being there
Conveying ability
Sharing feelings
Not burdening
Doing For
Doing for the other as he/she would do for the
self if it were at all possible
Comforting
Anticipating
Performing
Competently/skillful
Protecting
Preserving dignity
Enabling
Facilitating the other’s passage through life
transitions and unfamiliar events
Informing/explaining
Supporting/allowing
Focusing
Generating
Alternative/thinking it
through
Validating/giving feedback
Maintaining
belief
Sustaining faith in the other’s capacity to get
through an event or transition and face a future
meaning
Believing in/ holding in
esteem
Maintaining a hope-filled
attitude
Offering realistic optimism
“Going the distance”
The Primacy of Caring (Benner and Wrubel)
Caring is central to the essence of nursing. Caring creates the possibilities for coping and creates
possibilities for connecting with and concern for others.
Caring for Self
Caring for self means taking the time to nurture oneself. This involves initiating and maintaining
behaviors that promote healthy living and well-being.
A balanced diet
Regular exercise
Adequate rest and sleep
Recreational Activities
Meditation and praye