NUR 513: Applying Nursing Theory to patient care essay example Describe the purpose of applying nursing theory to patient care. Explain why nursing theory is meaningful to current practice. Explain how a nursing theory can be applied before planning and providing care in current practice. Discuss which theory best reflects your personal view of the essence of nursing and how it has been helpful to you for planning and providing care to your patients.

NUR 513: Applying Nursing Theory to patient care essay example Describe the purpose of applying nursing theory to patient care. Explain why nursing theory is meaningful to current practice. Explain how a nursing theory can be applied before planning and providing care in current practice. Discuss which theory best reflects your personal view of the essence of nursing and how it has been helpful to you for planning and providing care to your patients.

Watson’s Theory of Caring Paper
Stacimay
NUR/403
January 24, 2011
Nita

In this paper the subject to discuss is Watson’s Theory of Caring, a description of her key concepts and include the application of Watson’s theory in a nurse-patient relationship. It will identify the carative factors pertinent in the patient-nurse relationship and attempt to provide an explanation of how Watson’s portrayal of person, health, and environment are important facets of her theory. Watson earned her doctoral degree in educational psychology and counseling and a published author of works in psychology and the theory of caring (Cara, 2003). She studied the art of caring throughout the world and her research focused on the art of human caring and loss. Watson’s theory of nursing, “The Philosophy and Science of Nursing” was published in 1979 that began the process identifying the 10 caritive factors (Current Nursing, 2010). According to McCance, McKenna, and Boore, (1999) Watson’s theory of nursing is grounded in the “philosophy of being and knowing (p.1389). Watson (2003) asks that nurses “reexamine our own meaning of life and death” and from this come to understand the art of caring and healing not only of others but also ourselves (p. 197). Watson encourages nurses to return to the basics that beckoned them to become a nurse in the first place and the practice of the art of caring for another human being (Alligood, 2010). The American Nurses Association concurred with Watson and in 1995 revised the definition of nursing to include caring in its policy (Watson & Smith, 2002).

Core to Watson’s theory is the “carative factors, the transpersonal caring relationship, and the caring occasion/caring moment” (Cara, 2003, p. 51). Watson’s carative factors, described by Alligood (2010) “as the foundation and framework for the science and practice of nursing (112)....