Jean Watson's

 WATSON'S ASSUMPTIONS OF CARING

• Human caring in nursing is not just an emotion, concern, attitude or benevolent desire. Caring connotes a personal reponse.
• Caring is an intersubjective human process and is the moral idea of nursing.
• Caring can be effectively demonstrated only interpersonally.
• Effective caring promotes health and individual or family growth.
• Caring promotes health more than does curing.
• Caring responses accept a person not only as a they are now, but also for what the person may become.
• A caring environment offers the development of potential while allowing the person to choose the best action for the self at a given point in time.
• Caring occasions involve action and choice by nurse and client. If the caring occasion is transpersonal, the limits of openness expand, as do human capacities.
• The most abstract characteristic of a caring person is that the person is somehow responsive to another person as a unique individual, perceives the other's feelings, and sets one person apart from another.
• Human caring involves values, a will and a commitment to care, knowledge, caring actions and consequences.
• The ideal and value of caring is a starting point, a stance and an attitude that has to become a will, an intention, a commitment and a conscious judgement that manifests itself in concrete acts.