Analyzing Nursing Care Using Watson's Theory: A Report

This report explores the application of Watson's theory of caring in nursing practice, particularly in the context of childbirth and hysterectomy cases. It emphasizes the importance of nurses' role in providing holistic care, addressing patients' psychological and emotional needs, and fostering a trusting relationship. The report highlights the nursing metaparadigm, which considers environment, people, health, and nursing, and the need for nurses to be empathetic, understanding, and sensitive to cultural and personal beliefs. It underscores the significance of applying Watson's theory to improve patient outcomes by instilling faith, hope, and positive expression of feelings. The report also suggests the implementation of a psychometric assessment tool to evaluate nurses' caring behavior, ensuring a high standard of patient care.

Introduction:
Every nursing practice has its areas of improvement. nurses are caregivers who need to
bring out the best outcome in patients and in women who are about to deliver .A practice that can
be vastly improved is the self-confidence of the mothers who fear that childbirth is a very
difficult issue and puts women at a disadvantage .Nurses need to be very tactful in handling this
issue as it is very psychological and also deals with self-efficacy.
Theory of nursing:
Nursing theory guides nurses and gives them a framework that supports their
independence and autonomy in nursing. The nursing theory makes nurses unique not just as
followers to physicians but also in allowing them to take a decision within the framework of
nursing practices yet the very important autonomy to give the best intervention.
The role of theory in clinical nursing practice is to guide assessment, interventions, and
evaluation of nursing care. Nursing metaparadigm is one of the major concepts within the
nursing field. It has four major aspects: environment, people, health, and nursing. The main goal
of this concept is to look at each patient as a holistic individual with specific needs (Alligood,
2011).
Hysterectomy is not only a surgical problem but it a huge psychological problem as in
some culture women who had a hysterectomy is considered lost her femininity due to some false
beliefs about the effect on the hormones in her body.
I worked before in an ob-gyn office, and one of the patients that we faced that problem
was a relatively young patient in her 40’s, who suffered from abnormal uterine bleeding, and
from the beginning she was very worried she might need a hysterectomy, she has been treated
medically for a few months, but unfortunately all measures failed, and she was left with only one

option which is hysterectomy. At that moment no one assesses why she was very worried about
the hysterectomy, no one address it beyond the normal fear from any surgical procedure, the
patient was traumatized and ended up with depression and refused the surgery despite her
suffering from the bleeding which worsens her depression.
Watson’s theory of caring looks at the very important role as a caregiver .Women into childbirth
need special attention and special care, and hence every case of motherhood needs different
facets of care .the nurses to have to be loving and kind of the mothers to be
They have to inspire and motivate mothers to be with the idea of a new life that they are going to
bring in.
Nurture every kind of relationship and create a very important trust and learn to be empathetic.
And also learn to address individual needs. (Watson, 2012)
Nurses who get motivated to make the best of their professional autonomy bring out almost all
aspects of the theory of caring as suggested.
Therefore applying Watson theory of human caring is to reinforce the installation of faith
and hope and expression of feeling which is positive and which will enable the woman in
childbirth to come out of this experience with a greater impact and look at herself in a new light.
Watson’s inspirational aspect of caring will touch this aspect of caring .The way the case would
be the best approach for this patient as through the theory, we could identify her problem, and
that would help in the management of her problems. The woman feels that she could be in
danger of losing her life or her looks or even herself. This is a very traumatic experience, and
hence, every nurse should ensure that they bring out quality caregiving by donning different
roles that are ideally mapped to pregnant mothers. the nurses understand that the mothers to be
are undergoing severe stress and balance of mind and hence have to be tackled in a very sensitive

and intense way .The concept of Watson theory that could identify the problem is the multiple
ways of knowing, and understanding of the patient’s ethical, personal, cultural and spiritual
beliefs and attending to every small change in systems both physical and mental to bring about
positive outcomes in childbirth. (Watson, 2012).
In our patient, the proper approach to identify her fear was to deeply interact with the
patient and understand her background and her cultural believes which would reveal where her
fears are coming from, which was not done in her case.
According to Watson theory, strict mindset toward science, knowledge, and evidence
often conflict with other ways of knowing, so knowing goes beyond the scientific knowledge of
the disease symptoms to know what other factors affecting the patient including he believes,
cultures, personality and his attitude towards the childbirth .
A psychometric assessment tool that would assess the caring behaviour of nurses should be
implemented for understanding whether nurses have been able to really look at caring as a very
important factor of nursing behaviour This psychometric tool will measure many important
aspects of nursing behaviour using a validity scale and measured on a scale of 1 to 6.this would
enable nurses to be rated in an appropriate manner and wherever found lacking, this would pull
up nurses and train them appropriately .

References:
Alligood, M. (2011). Nursing Theory-Guided Research. Nursing Science Quarterly, 24(3), 195-
196. doi: 10.1177/0894318411409427
Nursing Students' Perceptions of Instructor Caring: An Instrument Based on Watson's Theory of
Transpersonal Caring
Watson, J. (2012). 33rd International Association for Human Caring Conference Caring
Connections: Research, Practice, Education. International Journal Of Human Caring, 16(3), 49-
90. doi: 10.20467/1091-5710.16.3.49