Jean Watson's Nursing Theory In Nursing

Person

Watson (1988) defines person as a feeling and perceiving being-in-the-world, which is continuous in time and place. She understandings the person as a epicenter of human existence, a living, changing, growing, gestalt (Sellers, 1991) with a unique phenomenal field of subjective reality. She claims that a person owns three domains of existence - mind, body and soul that are influenced by a changing concept of self. Of all these spheres, Watson identifies soul as the most important being of a person.

Health

According to Jean Watson, health is “a unity and agreement within the mind, body, and soul” and is associated with the “degree of congruence between the perceived self and the self as experienced” (Alligood & Tomey, 2010, p. 99). Watson believes

Much like Florence Nightingale, Jean Watson researched and preached the moral and spiritual features of nursing. Both believed that the nurse is situated at a pivotal role of creating the opportunity of bodily healing and recovery. As a pioneer nurse theorist, Watson spent over decades probing for an in-depth understanding of what it was to be human and endeavored to develop a philosophy within the nursing community. Jean Watson’s Human Care Theory utilizes a humanistic approach and can be useful in the day-to-day practice in the profession of nursing. It promotes the idea of taking care of oneself, of using thoughtful and insightful practice, and of being passionately connected to our patients. As her the human care theory is so deeply integrated in the nursing profession and culture, it is impossible to imagine what nursing would be like today without the contributions of nurse theorists like Jean Watson. Since this model of caring apparently lacks sufficient development in practice due to lack of pragmatic studies, further research needs to be conducted to validate its application in an interprofessional practice