Watson Nursing Theory

Jean Watson’s “caring science and the science of unitary human beings: a trans-theoretical discourse for nursing knowledge development is a scholarly article in which she intended to explore integration, convergence, and creative synthesis of caring science (CS) and the science of unitary human beings (SUHB); while maintaining the integrity of the theories. Of all the articles recommended to read for the philosophy course in nursing, Jean Watson’s article was the most challenging and intriguing article to read. I have been studying quantum physics, quantum healing, and holistic medicine as a dilettante researcher for the last five years; which enticed me to pursue a research career to disentangle the final healing process and bring that process

As a contemporary nurse theorist, she was trying to integrate her dominant discourse with another parallel of her time- Martha Rogers. Her action is a brave attempt to create a meta-paradigm for nursing- a Unitary Science. Watson acknowledges the argument of Paley (2001) that the caring is an elusive concept but points out that it is elusive because of its diversity. She borrowed Heidegger and Husserl’s words to criticize Paley’s attempt to reach the tautological conclusion about the caring concept in nursing and urged him to understand caring as a tool rather than something to be observed. When she suggested that the elusiveness of the caring concept paradoxically motivates nurses to chase it; it resonated with many nursing theorists. Even though I am not sure about how Paley responded to Watson’s argument, many nursing theorists took the word of Watson and used caring as a tool in their conceptual framework including Kristen Swanson in her caring theory and succeeded in their

She goes beyond the past tendencies of just looking at the differences of nursing theories to ideas that unite them to evoke new creative ideas. She tries to explain how the theoretical framework of caring evolved into philosophical, conceptual and epistemological undertaking and differs from just caring. Concurrently, nursing’s focus on the relationship of caring for health and healing differentiated it from other disciplines. However, I felt, the difference between “just caring” and caring in nursing can explain through exploring the concepts of healing and consciousness. Even though, nurses possess an ethical obligation for caring, the ultimate aim is to restore health through healing. These two concepts were not explicitly defined in the conceptual framework of caring. The other main elements missing in the Metaparadigm of the caring theory are environment and culture that seek to inform and embrace