JEAN WATSON
THEORY OF HUMAN CARING
Human Being/Person
• She adopts a view of the human being as: “….. a valued person in and of him or herself
to be cared for, respected, nurtured, understood and assisted; in general a philosophical
view of a person as a fully functional integrated self. He, human is viewed as greater than
and different from, the sum of his or her parts”.
Health
• Watson believes that there are other factors that are needed to be included in the WHO
definition of health. She adds the following three elements:
o A high level of overall physical, mental and social functioning
o A general adaptive-maintenance level of daily functioning
o The absence of illness (or the presence of efforts that leads its absence)
Environment/society
• According to Watson, caring (and nursing) has existed in every society. A caring attitude
is not transmitted from generation to generation. It is transmitted by the culture of the
profession as a unique way of coping with its environment.
Nursing
• “ Nursing is concerned with promoting health, preventing illness, caring for the sick and
restoring health”.
• It focuses on health promotion and treatment of disease. She believes that holistic health
care is central to the practice of caring in nursing.
• “A human science of persons and human health-illness experiences that are mediated by
professional, personal, scientific, esthetic and ethical human transactions”.
CARING AS THE ESSENCE OF NURSING (JEAN WATSON, 1979)
Watson viewed caring as the essence of nursing. Caring connotes responsiveness
between the nurse and the person. The nurse co-participates with the person. The purpose of
caring is to assist the person in gaining control and becoming knowledgeable, and in the process
promote health changes. If we have thought of the concept of empowerment while reading this,
yes, we can say that it is similar to that. By allowing the client to be knowledgeable, the nurse
provides an environment for better decision-making, better self-control and, better self-respect.
The concept is common to Filipino culture: “kakayahan" or "patibayin ang kakayahan," meaning
assisting the person in gaining control.
While it is true that caring as an attribute in nursing has been described and clarified by
many others, there is uniqueness in Watson's science of caring. Basic assumptions for the
science of caring are supported by ten carative factors that provide structure to the concept of
caring. According to Watson, the first three carative factors provide the philosophical foundation
