Page 280 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

Carita s cur ricul um and t e achin g -le ar ni n g
feelings, intellect, and relationships. Nightingale stated (quoted in
Dossey, Keegan, and Guzzetta 2005:103) that health “is not only to
be well, but to be able to use every power we have to use.” Her eth-
ics and values guided her approach to learning and practicing. Dossey
and colleagues (2005:54) pointed out that Nightingale’s recurring mes-
sage was about what constituted the “lifelong journey of healing and
what is required to understand the wholeness of human existence. To
her, healing was the blending of the nurse’s inner life with her outer
life to facilitate her creative expression of love.” This process was one
of inner peace radiating from the nurse to the person receiving care so
the person would feel safe and in harmony. Such a perspective was one
of the authenticity and unconditional human presence of the nurse
and engagement in “self-reflection, and connections with the Divine”
(Dossey, Keegan, and Guzzetta 2005:54).
In Nightingale’s framework for healing and health, kindness, car-
ing, and compassion were part of the unifying process, the “intercon-
nectedness with self, others, nature, and God/Life Force/Absolute/
Transcendent” (Dossey, Keegan, and Guzzetta 2005:54). Nightingale’s
vision and advice for nursing education and practice have relevance
today as they did in history, in that they pointed toward timeless
dimensions of nursing, learning, teaching, and clinical care that still
need attention.
Nightingale’s vision pointed to the need to put the parts back
into the whole, to create space whereby a reunion can occur between
physical and metaphysical. The rest of this chapter seeks to address
these timeless yet pressing issues within the context of a value-based
nursing education. By overcoming the mythology of epistemology as
stagnant, deforming, and detached, a living ethic, epistemology, and
ontology of wholeness, relationship, and human caring-healing will
be developed. Such a values-guided epistemology is built on a moral,
philosophical Caring Science model for education, for curriculum, for
teaching and learning that allows Caritas Nursing to evolve.

caring science as context for nursing education
As a reminder, the term Caritas has the Latin meaning of care or a
certain form of love. This differentiates it from love as amore. The lat-

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