FOREWORD
Marilyn E. Parker, PhD, RN, Professor of Nursing Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
Caring may be one of the most often used words in the English language. Indeed, the word is commonly used as much in talking about our everyday lives and relationships as it is in the marketplace. At the same time, nurses thinking about, doing, and describing nursing know that caring has unique and particular meaning to them. Caring is one of the first synonyms for nursing offered by nursing students and is surely the most frequent word used by the public in talking about nursing. Caring is an essential value in the personal and professional lives of nurses. The formal recognition of caring in nursing as an area of study and as a necessary guide for the various avenues of nursing practice, however, is relatively new. Anne Boykin and Savina Schoenhofer have received many requests from academic peers and students to articulate the nursing theory they have been working to develop. This book is a response to the call for a theory of nursing as caring. The progression of nursing theory development often has been led by nurse theorists who stepped into other disciplines for ways to think about and study nursing and for structures and concepts to describe nursing practice. The opportunity to use language and methods of familiar, relatively established bodies of knowledge that could be communicated and widely understood took shape as many nursing scholars received graduate education in disciplines outside of nursing. Conceptions and methods of knowledge development often came then from disciplines in the biological and social sciences and were brought into ways of thinking about and doing nursing scholarship. Evolution of new worldviews opened the way for nurses to develop theories reflecting ideas of energy fields, wholeness, processes, and patterns. Working from outside the discipline of nursing, along with shifts in worldviews, has been essential to opening the way for nurses to explore nursing as a unique practice and body of knowledge from inside the discipline, and to know nursing in unprecedented ways.
Nursing as Caring: A Model for Transforming Practice sets forth a different order of nursing theory. This nursing theory is personal, not abstract. In order to express nursing as caring there is a clear need to know self as caring person. The focus of the Nursing as Caring theory, then, is not toward an end product such as health or wellness. It is about a unique way of living caring in the world. It is about nurses and nursed living life and nurturing growing humanly through participation in life together.
Nursing as caring sets forth nursing as a unique way of living caring in the world. This theory provides a view that can be lived in all nursing situations and can be practiced alone or in combination with other theories. The domain of nursing is nurturing caring. The integrity, the wholeness, and the connectedness of the person simply and assuredly is central. As such, this is perhaps the most basic, bedrock, and therefore radical, of nursing theories and is essential to all that is truly nursing.
The dynamic, living idea of nursing as caring must be expressed knowledgeably. Perhaps for this reason, the book presents the essence of the idea and encourages its careful study and understanding in full hope for further development. In this regard, many questions come to mind in thinking about this work and its importance for the discipline and practice of nursing.
* What distinguishes this nursing theory from others?
* In what ways does this work add to the body of nursing knowledge?
* In what new and distinct ways are we to view theories of our discipline and practice?
* What are new descriptions of processes for development, study, and appraisal of nursing theories?
* How will new relationships among nursing theories be discovered and described?
As earlier theorists brought words and ways of other bodies of knowledge to help nurses know and articulate nursing, so some of the language of this new theory has been drawn from philosophy. Generally, the language used to express the theory of nursing as caring is everyday language. This model is a clear assertion of and for nursing—it distinguishes nursing knowledge, questions, and methods from those of other disciplines. It helps us explore ways to use nursing knowledge and knowledge of other disciplines in ways appropriate to nursing. This volume offers rich illustrations of nursing that will immediately seem familiar to most nurses. Many nurses will come to know new possibilities for nursing practice, teaching, administration, and inquiry more fully.
In trying to open the door of this book and invite the reader to explore the Nursing as Caring model, I am personally aware that the living of nursing and the commitment nursing calls forth cannot be fully measured. Each of us is part of the ongoing creation of nursing as we share our experience of nursing. These attempts to share our nursing are a major part of the development of nursing as a discipline and professional practice. Our expressions about nursing are continually challenged as part of the creating process.
The processes of theory development have been the ongoing gift of many nursing scholars, theorists, and researchers. In expressing this new theory of Nursing as Caring, nurses have again courageously stepped forward to develop, articulate, and publish ideas that seem very new to many, and in doing so have risked to offer opportunity for a full range of responses to this work. I know Anne Boykin and Savina Schoenhofer invite with great anticipation responses from nurses and will appreciate opportunity for dialogue.