Anne Boykin

grew up in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, the eldest of six children

BSN Alverno College in Milwaukee (1966)

PhD from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee

Professor Emeritus of the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at FAU

Director of the college’s new Anne Boykin Institute for the Advancement of Caring in Nursing

Nursing as Caring: A Model for Transforming Practice (coauthored with Schoenhofer)

Living a Caring-Based Program (1994)

editor of Power, Politics and Public Policy: A Matter of Caring (1995) and coeditor (along with Gaut) of
Caring as Healing: Renewal Through Hope (1994)

MAJOR CONCEPTS & DEFINITIONS

Focus and Intention of Nursing

The focus of nursing from the perspective of the Theory of Nursing as Caring is that the discipline of
knowledge and professional practice is nurturing persons living and growing in caring. The general
intention of nursing is to know persons as caring and to support and sustain them as they live caring
(Boykin & Schoenhofer, 2006).

Perspective of Persons as Caring

From the perspective of the theory, “fundamentally, potentially, and actually each person is caring”
(Boykin & Schoenhofer, 2001a, p. 2), even though every act of the person might not be understood as
caring. Knowing the person as living caring and growing in caring is foundational to the theory.

Nursing Situation

The nursing situation is the locus of all that is known and done in nursing (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 2001a)
and is conceptualized as “the shared, lived experience in which caring between nurse and nursed
enhances personhood” (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 1993, p. 33).

Personhood

Personhood is a process of living that is grounded in caring. Personhood implies being who we are as
authentic caring persons and being open to unfolding possibilities for caring.
Direct Invitation

the direct invitation opens the relationship to true caring between the nurse and the one nursed. The
direct invitation of the nurse offers the opportunity to the one nursed to share what truly matters in the
moment.

Call for Nursing

Calls for nursing are calls for nurturance perceived in the mind of the nurse (Boykin & Schoenhofer,
2001a, 2001b).

Caring Between

When the nurse enters the world of the other person with the intention of knowing the other as a caring
person, the encountering of the nurse and the one nursed gives rise to the phenomenon of caring
between, within which personhood is nurtured (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 2001a)

Nursing stories embody the lived experience of nursing situations involving the nurse and the nursed.
The content of nursing knowledge is generated, developed, conserved, and known through the lived
experience of nursing situations.

In responding to the nursing call, the nurse enters the nursing situation with the intention of knowing
the other person as caring. This knowing of person clarifies the call for nursing and shapes the nursing
response, transforming the knowledge brought by the nurse to the situation from general, to particular
and unique (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 2001a).