1. Nursing is a caring profession.

As a unique profession, it is practiced with an earnest concern for

the art of care and the science of health. The profession involves a humanistic blend of scientific
knowledge and holistic nursing practice.

 The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individuals, sick or well, in the performance
of those activities contributing to the health or its recovery (or to a peaceful death) that he
would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge, and to do this in
such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible. (Henderson)
 A humanistic science dedicated to compassionate concern with maintaining and promoting
health and preventing illness and caring for and rehabilitating the sick and disabled. (Rogers)
 A helping or assisting service to persons who are wholly or partly dependent—infants,
children and adults—when they, their parents and guardians or other adults responsible for
their care are no longer able to give or supervise their care. (Orem)
 A helping profession that assists individuals and groups in society to attain, maintain, and
restore health. If this is not possible, nurses help individuals die with dignity. (King)

Nursing – what it is today is the result of charges in the scientific, technological, political, social,
and economic climate. Through the years, the concept of nursing has been exoanded and
subsequently, the role of the nurse has become broader to meet the changing needs of the
society. Likewise, career opportunities in nursing have greatly expanded.

References: Fundamentals of Nursing

Concept & Clinical Application
Josie Quiambao- Ullan, RN, MAN

2. Care of a nurse is unique to every human being. Caring means that persons, events, projects and
things matter to people. It is a word of being connected. It also reveals what is stressful and the
available options for coping. Caring creates “possibility” as an inherent feature of nursing practice,
caring enables nurses help clients to recover in the face of illness, to give meaning to that illness and to
maintain or re-establish connection. (Benner)
Care is the essence and central unifying and dominant domain that distinguish nursing from the
other health disciplines. Care is an essential human need, necessary for the health and survival of all
individuals. Acts of caring refer to the direct, indirect nurturant and skilful activities, processors and
decisions that assist people in ways that are empathic, compassionate and supportive; and that are
dependent on the needs, problems and values of the individual being assisted. (Leininger)
Caring-healing is communicated through the consciousness of the nurse to the individual being
cared for. Transpersonal caring expands the limits of openness and allows access to higher human spirit
thus expanding human consciousness. (Watson)