Nurse Theorist and Their Work

Human Caring Science Theory

Jean Watson’s research while completing her Doctorate in Clinical and Psychology led to the Human Caring Science Theory. Her initial publication helped to provide nursing and client care new significance and respect. The Caring Science Theory is a combination of art, humanities, and science that emphasizes connectivity, unity, and caring as the most important aspects (Alligood, 2014). Watson’s Human Care Science Theory delineates many components of caring and how they relate to the patient’s well-being. Watson sees caring as an attitude that is influenced by nursing culture rather than merely socialization in our society. Caring encompasses a person’s intrinsic characteristics. It must be displayed and practiced, and it must satisfy the individual’s requirements. It is comparable to healing in that it must improve health.

Nursing is the concept of health promotion, sickness prevention, and giving proper care to the sick and diseased in order to restore their health. Watson argues that instead of focusing exclusively on illness processes, nursing should consider the patient’s mental, physical, and social variables. Nursing, she says, is the “human science of people and their health-illness experiences as mediated by professional, personal, scientific, esthetic, and ethical human interactions” Alligood,(2014). While ministering to the patient’s fundamental requirements, nursing should establish a compassionate and authentic environment.

Conceptual Models

Conservation of Structural Integrity

The human organism’s structure and function are inextricably linked and complimentary. As a result, nursing treatments aimed at ensuring appropriate energy to sustain life processes (function) must be balanced with interventions aimed at maintaining the body’s natural structure (Miller, 2019). Tissue healing occurs under ideal conditions with minimum structural change; nonetheless, sequelae of the healing process might retain tissue continuity but at the price of normal structural organization, causing function to be disrupted. In certain circumstances, structural damage results in long-term incapacity. The focus of nursing care then switches to assisting the impaired individual in reaching a new degree of adaptability Alligood, (2014). To reduce structural damage and avoid impairment, all nursing care should keep a constant rehabilitative focus. Every illness is an attack on structural integrity, according to Watson, and all forms of surgical intervention are aimed to restore or remodel structural integrity Alligood, (2014).

Organism Response (Integrated or Holistic Response)

Humans react to their surroundings in a distinct yet integrated way that is unique to them and only them (Alligood, 2014). Because the term organismic refers to the biology of living things, it implies that numerous parts must interact to form a complete, integrated organismic reaction. According to Watson, every reaction is organismic, and every adaptive change is carried out by the entire person Alligood,(2014). At least four levels of protective organismic reactivity have been established by Alligood,(2014), each scientifically defined and used to shield the organism so that it can adapt to its environment throughout time (Alligood, 2014). The inflammatory-immune response, which shields the organism against environmental irritants and pathogens, is a means of healing; yet, it depletes energy reserves. Many nursing treatments aim to promote the inflammatory-immune system’s reparative components while reducing tissue harm (Miller, 2019). Nursing care also emphasizes environmental management to reduce exposure to allergens and germs.

Analysis and Comparison of Conceptual Models

Energy conservation refers to the balance between energy input and output in order to avoid over-fatigue. It entails getting enough sleep, eating well, and exercising on a regular basis. “Conservation of structural integrity” refers to the process of preserving or repairing the physical body by avoiding or inducing physical breakdown (Miller, 2019). The patient is seen as someone who values personal integrity in order to get acknowledgment, regard, mindfulness, self-hood, and self-assurance. Social respectability is safeguarded when a patient is recognized as an individual from a family, a local area, a strict or ethnic gathering, a political framework, and a country. Holistic nursing care, then again, is a way of thinking that oversees patient care and depends on the thoughts of humanism and comprehensive quality (Miller, 2019). It is portrayed as the arrangement of treatment to patients in view of a common consciousness of their physical, mental, enthusiastic, and otherworldly highlights.

References

Alligood, M. R. (2014). Nursing theorists and their work-e-book. Elsevier Health Sciences, 64-129.

Miller, A. (2019). The relationship between nursing theory and nursing practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 10(5), 17-24.