The Essence of Human Caring

The Ten Caritas Processes | Dr. Jean Watson

Estimated read time: 1:20

    AI is evolving every day. Don't fall behind.

    Join 50,000+ readers learning how to use AI in just 5 minutes daily.

    Completely free, unsubscribe at any time.

    Summary

    Dr. Jean Watson delves into the Ten Caritas Processes, which are universal principles of human caring. She emphasizes the importance of these processes in professional nursing practice, highlighting how they offer a language to articulate caring practices. Watson discusses the foundational role of self-care and compassion in the first Caritas Process, and the significance of developing authentic relationships in the fourth process. The transcript also touches upon the transformative potential of these processes in creating a healing environment and addressing both basic and more profound patient needs. The discussion of these principles serves as a guide for nurses to enhance their personal and professional growth.

      Highlights

      • Discover the universal language of human caring through the Ten Caritas Processes. 🌍
      • Learn why self-compassion is the first step in providing care to others. ❤️
      • Explore the significance of authentic and trusting relationships in nursing. 🤝

      Key Takeaways

      • The Ten Caritas Processes provide a language for expressing nursing care. 🗣️
      • Self-care and compassion are foundational in the Caritas model. 💖
      • Authentic presence is crucial for fostering hope and healing. 🌟

      Overview

      Dr. Jean Watson introduces the Ten Caritas Processes, a groundbreaking approach that outlines the universals of human caring within nursing. These processes offer nurses a language to communicate their practice better and ensure that care remains visible and impactful amidst the hustle and bustle of modern healthcare environments. The Caritas approach begins with self-care, urging nurses to practice loving kindness with themselves before extending such compassion to their patients.

        The journey she describes through the Caritas Processes emphasizes the profound impact of nurturing authentic, trusting relationships within healthcare settings. By being genuinely present, nurses can invigorate faith and hope in others, aligning heart-centered awareness with professional practice. These relationships form the bedrock that enables healing processes, making them integral to every nurse's approach.

          Moreover, Watson discusses the necessity of understanding and honoring both positive and negative feelings in patients as part of the healing journey. The integration of environmental consciousness within these processes underlines the importance of nurses not just as caregivers but as the very atmosphere of care, influencing the healing environment. This holistic approach challenges nurses to embrace both certainty and mystery, openness to experiences that defy conventional medical understanding.

            The Ten Caritas Processes | Dr. Jean Watson Transcription

            • 00:00 - 00:30 I'm delighted to continue some of the teaching about the theory of human caring and the essence of it, which I mentioned before. Has the language of the ten. Ten Caritas Processes these Ten Caritas Processes are actually considered universals of human caring. When you are. Practicing caring, this is what you're. Actually doing and this is the way in which you are being. But you may not be aware of it. So by giving language and voice and action to these ten.
            • 00:30 - 01:00 To these Ten Caritas Processes You can actually be more confident, you can be more poised. You can be more professional. You will have the ability to articulate your Practice and have a shared language. And it is a reminder for. All of us that we're in this very hectic postmodern world which is acknowledging. If you don't have your own language, you don't exist. And nursing being the. Largest health profession in the world
            • 01:00 - 01:30 And yet largely we've been invisible. Because we don't have our language. To describe to the. Public or to our other professional colleagues what caring is in relation to our daily practice. So these Ten Caritas Processes Provide you with a language and a shared way in which you can communicate and articulate your professional practice So the starting point as I mentioned before has to do with. You. You are the ultimate instrument.
            • 01:30 - 02:00 We are the human instrument. We are the light in the institutional darkness. But caring starts with self. And fulfilling these Values that bring us to this field in the first place that we have a Responsibility to offer to the public But how in the world Do we sustain these humanistic, altruistic values of compassionate service. If we do not take. Care of ourselves first? So the very first Caritas Process has to do.
            • 02:00 - 02:30 With offering loving kindness and equanimity to love with. Yourself, loving kindness and tenderness to yourself first, and cultivating this as a daily practice Hospitals that are doing this work. They may take a whole Month just for the nurses to engage. In systematic attention to the practice of. Loving kindness and equanimity and kindness. Gentleness, tenderness with themselves so we can have.
            • 02:30 - 03:00 Compassion for self. Therefore, we have compassion for our colleagues We have compassion for our Patients and for the families and All the emotional turmoil that we go through in our daily life. So the first Caritas Process has to do with. That foundational starting point. And in the. Earlier sequence, I actually started with the singing bowl Which is calibrated to the heart, because the. Heart vibration actually energetically Communicates these
            • 03:00 - 03:30 Higher vibration feelings of Compassion and love from our heart. Our heart actually sends more messages to the brain than the brain sends to the heart so if we don't have a. Practice of compassion for ourselves in our heart center. We actually can be unkind to ourselves. We can be unkind to other people without even intending that to be the case. So this takes a professional commitment. And a personal commitment to adhere to and cultivate.
            • 03:30 - 04:00 The practice of loving kindness with yourself. This can be done in the instant It can be done in a systematic way It can be done on the on the floor in the moment that you're actually. Practicing by pausing. And breathing into this space So that's the very First Caritas Process The Second Caritas Process has to do With your ability to be authentically present To another person And in that. Authentic presence, in this heart centered.
            • 04:00 - 04:30 heart centered awareness This kindness, this compassionate space. You actually are helping that person. To enable the faith and hope about their outcome. We know there's a great deal of research. On the role of prayer, faith, hope, religion and. Belief systems and value systems. The meaning a condition Has for a person or is contributing To their outcome and how they engage. In this process for themselves.
            • 04:30 - 05:00 So by your presence, your authenticity. Your ability to be there and Hold that space You actually are enabling the faith and hope for that other person. So that's the Second Caritas Process The Third Caritas Process has to do. Again back to you and your ability to mature and be Sensitive to yourself And your own feelings and emotions It's like. Honoring the complexities of our personality,
            • 05:00 - 05:30 even those parts that we may not like, but we know that. This is part of who we are. So we bring light into our own shadow side as well as understanding that. This is an. Ongoing life journey for all of us To learn to be more sensitive to ourselves. So that we can be more Sensitive to another person. This is highly related to the compassion. If we are able to have. Sensitivity and kindness and compassion. With ourselves.
            • 05:30 - 06:00 Then we're able to be more sensitive and. Have compassion to the other person. And this is a lifelong. Journey that we take both personally and professionally as we continue to offer and be accountable for offering and being Essence of. This caring theory and offering caring to the World. The Fourth Caritas Process has to do. With developing authentic, trusting relationships. Without the first two or three processes, you.
            • 06:00 - 06:30 Can't develop an authentic, trusting, helping relationship with another person. So they all build upon each other. Although these are not a linear sequencing of these processes. It's like a conscious start. You're holding the whole field in any given moment. But these are guides. That help you to sustain. And be reminded of what you're actually doing and how you are being in a given moment. so the ability to develop.
            • 06:30 - 07:00 Authentic, trusting relationships. Is tied to your ability to. Be sensitive to yourself its tied to. Your ability to have an authentic presence. It's tied to your ability to. Have these Sustaining values of loving, Kindness and compassion for yourself. So the. Patients themselves have often told us. That having a trusting relationship with. Your practitioner is one of the most important.
            • 07:00 - 07:30 Ingredients of their experience in a hospital. And whether they've had a successful outcome. So you can see how important this is. The Fifth Caritas Process has to. Do with Expressing And allowing for positive and negative feelings. Research has shown that if you can allow. A person to express both positive. And negative feelings, you actually are contributing to healing outcomes for that person.
            • 07:30 - 08:00 It actually is helping them to express themselves. To take those. Anger of that fear, that anxiety, that tension. That's confusing Them in their inner mind and put it into. An outside form so they can see themselves. They can hear themselves differently. They can begin to have new meaning for their own experience. So this too, is part of the process of Number five of allowing for.
            • 08:00 - 08:30 The expression of positive. And negative feelings. This, too, is part of some of the classic research that's. Been done about patients experience of. Human caring from nurses. This is classic research that was. Done in Iceland. But it's universal. In that some patients describe some of their nurses as. Actually making them feel worse. So you can see how this.
            • 08:30 - 09:00 Caring moment and your. Presence, In that given moment can either help somebody feel better or make them feel worse. It can be unkind and. Unsuccessful in terms of. Helping them with their health and healing. So this work has shown to that Some nurses describe. Some patients describe. Their nurses as making. Them feel cold or uncared for or robotic. So this moves.
            • 09:00 - 09:30 From some of the terminology of being. Toxic or. Biocidic to something that's referred to as. Bioactive. Which is a more classic. Caring relationship with a patient to what's referred to as biogenic. The biogenic field is. Where you have this loving kindness, compassion experience. With the patient in a given moment and the biogenic moment. And this process of being present in. That way is life giving and life.
            • 09:30 - 10:00 Receiving for both the patient and for. You as the nurse. So this too, is part of. Developing that trusting. Helping relationship and is a continuation of all. Of these Caritas Processes together. The Sixth Caritas Process has to do. With what we all know and love and have learned about the nursing. Process, except it takes the nursing process to. An entirely different level moving beyond just problems.
            • 10:00 - 10:30 Because we know now in our. New science that if you focus. On problems, you're going to have a bigger and bigger focus on that problem is going to get bigger and bigger. So this is an opportunity for us to use the. Creativity. our gifts and talents in. Ways that we can be creative. Use multiple ways of knowing we actually can engage in a creative. Process of solutions. Seeking it moves us into. New models of coaching. And counseling. Patients on self-care, on self-knowledge, on self treatment
            • 10:30 - 11:00 So you can actually participate and have the patient engage in their own creative process. Along with you. So you're co-creating this caring process together. The Seventh Caritas Processes has to. Do with the educational role that nurses have always played. But now. It's not just. Didactic giving people information and health teaching in the traditional way. It's about working with that person's. Subjective meaning, their inner life world and what they are understanding.
            • 11:00 - 11:30 So you work from their frame of reference, not your frame of reference. And this moves to. To a very relational, caring moment. With that person. In the teaching process so that you can actually engage them in the understanding of what they need to know at that point in time. The Eighth Caritas Process has to do. With the environment.
            • 11:30 - 12:00 So in this one it. Becomes very important to understand that ultimately we are the environment. Because our energetic presence, our ability to have compassion. Loving kindness. Authenticity presence. Consciousness intentionality A Caritas consciousness in that moment with that person. Holding space for them to be seen, to be heard, to know they matter. That becomes part. Of understanding that we become the healing environment we can be in the most beautiful.
            • 12:00 - 12:30 Magnificent hospital setting the most modern in the world. And if you have. Practitioners who are biocidic. You're going to have a very unhealthy environment. For yourself and for our practice and. For our patients and our communities. So the Eighth Caritas Process Is really important because we are creating the environment we are re-patterning the environment, we are the energetic environment, we are the light in the institutional.
            • 12:30 - 13:00 Darkness for our humanity. The Ninth Caritas Process has to. Do with their basic needs. If there's any one thing that nurses are involved in is taking care of patients. With assisting them with their basic needs. But in this consciousness in this theory, we really are very reverential and understanding that these basic needs have to be responded to with fullness of dignity, with humility, with compassionate.
            • 13:00 - 13:30 Service, to these to these others, that this becomes a sacred. Act that we offer to the best of what is needed for that person at that time that they cannot do. For themselves. So this becomes. A very important basic foundational physical need of which we are embedded and grounded in the caring theory through. These basic physical care acts as sacred acts. The 10th Caritas Process has to. Do with not knowing all the answers.
            • 13:30 - 14:00 It invites humility. It invites an unknown ways that are already. Present for. People's experiences. For example, we increasingly see miracles. And mysteries and. Unknowns that cannot be explained in a traditional Western modern medical eye's view of humanity or of medical science These are phenomena that are. Human experiences across. Time that millions of people have reported that we have to be open to.
            • 14:00 - 14:30 So the 10th Caritas Process has. Just been opened to and allowing for mysteries and miracles and staying within the other. Person's experience so. That miracles can indeed happen. We'll have a new book coming out shortly in the next month or two. On nurses experiences of having miracles. With their patients. So this is a. Summary of the Ten Caritas Process. as a brief overview. But with. These Ten Caritas Processes, as you.
            • 14:30 - 15:00 Become familiar with them, you will see. That they can serve as a guide for your practice. For your education, and for your own personal and professional development. So I'm going to stop at this point. And I will be doing a continuation of another series that will follow in terms of application and implementation in clinical practice