College of Nursing faculty and staff members discussed how best to prepare students to be \u201cnurse leaders transforming well-being and the environment,\u201d embracing the College\u2019s new tagline, by fully caring for their patients\u2019 needs instead of merely marking off a standard checklist, during a retreat led by nursing professor and the founder of Center for Human Caring and the Watson Caring Science Institute, Dr. Jean Watson.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are not just teaching students what to do, but how to be,\u201d said Watson, professor and dean emerita at University of Colorado Denver College of Nursing Anschutz Medical Center. \u201cStudents respond strongly when we demonstrate small behaviors, micro practices of care with patients\u2014eye contact, listening, presence, and intentional dialogue. Introduce students to the highest level of nursing. Hold them to the highest ethical ideal of who they are and who they\u2019re being and becoming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watson\u2019s Transpersonal Theory of Human Caring, and Caritas Processes of Unitary Caring Science are used to guide transformative models of practice, education, research and leadership. Her work is a foundation for advancing professional caring-healing and wellbeing practices for hospitals, health care, nurses and patients. Her theory of caring puts the focus on the patient\u2019s whole well-being, and involves patients directly in the process of care. The nurse focuses on \u201ccaring, healing, and wholeness, rather than on disease, illness and pathology.\u201d While it remains important for nurses to maintain a specific standard criteria for a patient\u2019s health, they must go deeper to understand what the patient really needs. That begins by creating a caring curriculum in the classroom, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have watched education try to change practice over the years. It\u2019s reversed now,\u201d Watson said. \u201cHospitals I am working with are saying we need education models to change because we are already using caring theory. We need to seek partnerships between education and clinical practice to stay up to date with what hospitals are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several faculty members echoed Watson\u2019s concerns about new nurses being too focused on specific sets of standard checklists to determine a patient\u2019s health instead of integration of a holistic perspective and looking at the bigger picture and assessing a patient\u2019s total wellbeing within the context of environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I talk to first-year students about why they want to get into nursing, it\u2019s always because of the care they want to provide, or because of the care they\u2019ve received in the past,\u201d said Clinical Assistant Professor Desirae Heys. \u201cThen, when I ask the same question of seniors, they don\u2019t talk about care; they talk about a checklist of care. We\u2019re forgetting why we started on this path in the first place. We can\u2019t just have checklists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Assistant Professor Dahianna Lopez, reflecting on checklists, said \u201cIt is not the core of what we stand for. It\u2019s not just about doing tasks. We have to start early with students and introduce them to the importance of care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dean Danny Willis led the group in a discussion of how faculty can better teach student nurses to implement the theory of caring when they are working with their own patients. He urged professors and clinical instructors to teach the process of caring, healing, humanization, wellbeing and healing environments, not just the content in textbooks.<\/p>\n
\u201cInformation is not knowledge; knowledge is not understanding; understanding is not practice,\u201d Willis said. \u201cWe can\u2019t just have a checklist. Anyone can be taught to take blood pressure, or to check an IV. What is the greater good or the greatest good for a patient? It is important to know you have established a human connection \u2013 it is all about caring practice. It is about trusting yourself and students trusting themselves to know how to provide care.\u201d<\/p>\n
The discussion and Watson\u2019s presentation to begin the academic year was part of the College of Nursing faculty and staff retreat held at the Nursing Education Center in Providence on Aug. 29. Watson led the group through mindfulness exercises and urged them to also care for themselves to be fully present for their students and patients. \u201cNursing is about humanity,\u201d she said. \u201cWe heal ourselves so we can see what we have to offer humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The college continued its introduction to the new semester the following day with the State of the College address, during which Willis and other faculty and staff members discussed the College\u2019s vision and commitment to caring, healing, and health for all; personnel matters; new facilities and opportunities for students, including a new virtual reality lab and simulation partnership with the College of Pharmacy and the URI theatre department; and strategies to prepare the next generation of students to be nurse leaders transforming wellbeing and the environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Center for Human Caring founder Jean Watson leads discussion on \u2018Transpersonal Theory of Human Caring\u2019 College of Nursing faculty and staff members discussed how best to prepare students to be \u201cnurse leaders transforming well-being and the environment,\u201d embracing the College\u2019s new tagline, by fully caring for their patients\u2019 needs instead of merely marking off a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":20240,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20241,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20239\/revisions\/20241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/nursing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}