Transpersonal Caring Philosophy

Nursing is a career of compassion, caring, self-discipline, hard work, responsibility, intelligence, and honesty. I could go on and on with the characteristics that describe nursing. I believe in Christian values and attach them to nursing. I think of the words of Jesus and the Bible when taking care of patients; “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them” (Luke 6:31). The Bible is a great source of strength and rules to live by for me. Because of this, I chose Watson’s Theory of Transpersonal Caring. Jean Watson’s work involved the nurse-patient relationship as a participation together to improve one’s health. She believed in health as a union of the mind, body, and soul. An individual without the harmony of all three would
The mind or psychological state of a person is of fundamental importance. A person has to want to be healthy in order to be healthy. If you don’t care about your health, you will abuse your body, hence without a healthy mind, you will not have a healthy body. The soul has to be healthy, or you will not be harmonious psychologically. I feel the soul reflects your personality and life view. If that view changes, such as when one loses faith, it will affect one’s mind. A Christian who loses faith will most likely become mentally ill during that period because his life view changed. He/she may feel angry or fooled and that life no longer has meaning. Now that the soul disharmonized the mind, the mind will then likely disharmonize the body. My theory is parallel to Watson’s view of the three elements of unity: mind, body, and
We must establish trust in order to teach and mentor the patient. If the patient does not listen to teaching, he/she may have disharmony of the mind or soul. We must heal the mind or soul before healing the body. For example, if a diabetic patient comes in to the hospital with diabetic hyperosmolar syndrome and knows he/she has diabetes, the patient is either lacking teaching (health promotion) or has illness of the mind. To allow one’s insulin to get to the point where it almost kills you, there is either a lack of responsibility or knowledge (teaching) or there is illness to the mind (do not care about the body). In either case, we must establish trust as a person of knowledge and teach the patient how to better monitor and take care of his/her blood sugar. If he/she continues to come to the hospital for lack of control, there is probably an illness to the mind. In this case, we will have to treat the mind, and then allow the patient to treat the