Page 154 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

Fr OM ca ratIve F a c tOr 7 t O C AR IT AS PROCE SS 7
affects his or her ability to receive and process the information. The
process of genuine teaching becomes transpersonal, in that the experi-
ence, the relationship, and the meaning and significance of the experi-
ence affect both parties within the teaching encounter. Thus, the rela-
tionship lives on beyond the context of the teaching, informing the life
and behavior and actions that flow from the experience.
Dated words such as “compliance” were used in relation to a per-
son following through on information and advice. The Caritas Model
of teaching-learning does not operate on the concept of “compliance,”
in that an authentic relational model and process is not one of author-
ity and use of a professional, superior position with an authoritar-
ian approach of control and power over another, with information
given out and expectations to comply with that information. Rather,
the Caritas Process of teaching-learning is more relational, trusting,
exploratory, engaging, and ultimately liberating for patient and oth-
ers. It involves power and control with, not over, the learner. Teaching-
learning in the practice of Caritas results in self-knowledge, self-care,
self-control, and even self-healing possibilities. There is a mutuality
whereby the Caritas Nurse helps the other generate his or her own
problem solving, decisions, constructive solutions, and actions that are
able to best serve him or her.
A Caritas teaching-learning process depends upon the nurse’s abil-
ity to accurately detect another’s feelings, thoughts, readiness, mood,
and so on, and then to connect with and access the other’s percep-
tions, feelings, concerns, knowledge, and understandings. The Caring
process requires openness to the other’s feelings, knowledge, informa-
tion, and level of intellectual understandings, as well as openness and
readiness for learning.
One of the core skills in this process is being able to genuinely
access, stay within, and work from the other person’s frame of refer-
ence rather than from one’s own reference point. The teaching-learning
process thus requires a meaningful relationship as well as timing and
sensitivity to the teaching moment. It is creative as well as purposive; it
requires conscious planning and knowledgeable, informed action.
While the traditional nursing educational-teaching role was one
of imparting information, this was usually done in conventional ways

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