THEORY OF TRANSPERSONAL CARING by JEAN

WATSON  

A CASE STUDY PRESENTED IN GRADUATE SCHOOL

COLLEGE OF NURSINGST. PAUL UNIVERSITY DUMAGUETE

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS IN

N212 ADVANCE ADULT NURSING IVMASTERS OF SCIENCE IN NURSING

PREPARED BY: JORE LAJOT ROCO, BSN-RN

JEAN WATSON

Earned a diploma from Lewis Gale Hospital School of Nursing in Roanoke, VA

A baccalaureate in nursing degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder

A master’s degree in psychiatric mental health nursing from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, including deanship of the School of Nursing from 1983 to 1990

Founding Director of the Center for Human Caring.

JEAN WATSON

Distinguished Professor at the

University of Colorado

President of the National League for Nursing from 1995 to 1996

THEORY OF TRANSPERSONAL CARING It’s essence is authentic caring for the purpose

of preserving the dignity and wholeness of humanity

Theory emerged from the theorist’s own beliefs, values and perceptions about human life, health and healing.

Watson sees nursing’s “collective caring-healing role and its mission in society as attending to, and helping to sustain, humanity and wellness”

“To caring and healing work with others during their most vulnerable moments of life’s journey”

THEORY OF TRNSPERSONAL CARING Caring is independent to caring According to Watson, knowledge and

practice for a caring-healing discipline are primarily derived from the arts and humanities and an emerging human science that acknowledges a convergence of art and science.

PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND

Watson’s work has reflected a blend of Eastern and Western beliefs in what she refers to as emergency/ converging paradigm

Influenced by Whiteland, Kierkegaard, deChardin, Carl Rogers, Nightingale, Henderson , Leininger, Martha Rogers and Gadow.

Watson expresses the hope that such a relational ontology can heal not only individuals but unhelathy health care, sociopolitical and cultural institutions as well.

CONTENTS OF THE THEORY

Major Conceptual elements• Transpersonal caring relationship • Ten carative factors• Caring occasion/ caring moment

CONTENTS OF THE THEORY

The latent dimensions that are evolved and emerged are:

• Embodied spirit• Expanded views of self and person

transpersonal- mind, body and spirit oneness• Importance of caring-healing consciousness

within the human-environment field. • Positing of consciousness as energy• Phenomenal field/ unitary consciousness• Advanced caring-healing modalities/ nursing

arts.

TRANSPERSONAL CARING RELATIONSHIP

- Defined as human-to-human connectedness occurring in a nurse-patient encounter wherein “each is touched by the human center of the other”.

Transpersonal caring relationship depends on:• The moral commitment, intentionality and

consciousness needed to protect, enhance, promote and potentiate human dignity, wholeness and healing wherein a person creates or cocreates his or her own meaning for existence, healing, wholeness and caring

TRANSPERSONAL CARING RELATIONSHIP

• Orientation of the nurse’s intent, will and consciousness toward affirming the subjective/ intersubjective significance of the person.

• The nurse’s ability to assess and realize, accurately detect and connect with the inner condition of another

• The nurse’s ability to assess and realize another’s condition of being-in-the-world and to feel a union with the other

• The caring-healing modalities potentiate harmony, wholeness and comfort and promote inner healing

• The nurses’s own life history and previous experiences

TRANSPERSONAL CARING RELATIONSHIP

Recent elaboration on the concept of a transpersonal caring relationship describes this relationship occurring within a caring consciousness wherein a nurse enters “into the life space or phenomenal field of another person is able to detect the other person’s condition of being, feels this condition within self and responds in such a way that the person being cared for has a release of feelings, thought and tension.

TEN CARATIVE FACTORS

1. Forming a humanistic-altruistic system of values. 2. Enabling and sustain faith-hope3. Being sensitive to self and others4. Developing a helping-trusting, caring relationship

(seeking transpersonal connections). 5. Promoting and accepting the expression of

positive and negative feelings6. Engaging in creative, individualized, problem

solving caring processes. 7. Promoting transpersonal teaching-learning

TEN CARATIVE FACTORS

8. Attending to supportive, protective and/or corrective mental, physical, societal and spiritual environments. 9. Assisting with gratification of basic human needs while preserving human dignity and wholeness10. Allowing for, and being open to, existential-phenomenological and spiritual dimensions of caring and healing that cannot be fully explained scientifically through modern Western medicine.

CARING OCCASION/ CARING MOMENTOccurs whenever nurse and other (s) come together with their unique life histories and phenomenal field in a human-to-human transaction and is “a focal point in space and time has a greater field of its own that is greater than the occasion itself arises from aspects of itself that become part of the life history of each person, as well as part of some larger, deeper, complex pattern of life”

WATSON’S THEORY AND NURSING’S METAPARADIGM

PERSON- Human is viewed as a

valued person in and of him or herself

- Fully functional integrated self that is greater than and different from the sum of his or her parts

- Can go forward, through the use of mind, to higher levels of consciousness

- One’s soul possesses a body that is not confined by objective space and time

WATSON’S THEORY AND NURSING’S METAPARADIGM

ILLNESS- Subjective turmoil or disharmony within

a person’s inner self or soul at some level or disharmony within the spheres of the person

- Illness connotes a felt incongruence within the person such as an incongruence between the self as perceived and the self as experienced.

WATSON’S THEORTY AND NURSING’S METAPARADIGM

HEALTH • Is viewed holistically, as the unity

between the physical, social, mental and spiritual self, with all parts working together in harmony and functioning to their full capacity.

• Is a perceived by the patient and is influenced by their own unique life experiences (Bernick/2004).

• Entirely includes a individuals physical, social, aesthetic and moral realms, not just their behaviour and physiology (George/2002).

WATSON’S THEORY AND NURSING’S METAPARADIGM

ENVIRONMENT - Is crucial to the holistic healing (mental,

physical, social, emotional, spiritual, developmental, protective, supportive environments), which is conducive to a patients health and wellbeing.

- Affects both patients and nurses within a caring-healing model. (Bernick, 2004).

- Is usually designed as a home-like environment but these “systems still fall short as healing spaces” (Watson/1999).

- Contains “noise, privacy, light, access to nature, color, space and smells that can have an impact on the caring-healing process” (Watson/1999).

WATSON’S THEORY AND NURSING’S METAPARADIGM

NURSING - Nursing consist of knowledge , thoughts, values,

philosophy, commitment and action with some degree of passion. It is related to human care transactions and intersubjective personal human contact with the lived world of the experiencing person

- Consist of transpersonal human-to-human attempts to protect, enhance and preserve humanity by helping a person find meaning in illness, suffering, pain and existence

- Help another to gain self-knowledge, control and self-healing wherein a sense of inner harmony is restored regardless of the external circumstances

MODEL

LIMITATIONS OF WATSON’S THEORY Lack of emphasis on physical as a

separate entity on which to focus care disturbs those still practicing from the mechanistic medical model

STRENGHTS OF WATSON’S THEORY Transformative at all levels and realms of

nursing Directs the focus back onto the person

and mandates that technology be used selectively for the betterment of humankind rather than as the sole guiding factor in health care.

Rekindle the passion of nursing for the sacredness of being human and the sacred traditions of health and healing

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING AND GODBLESS

Everything happens for a reason to them who loves the Lord