Page 45 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

NU RSING: THE PHILO S OPHY A ND SCIENCE OF C A R I N G , revI s e d ed I t I o n
• Art about specific aspects of the healing process—pain, loss,
body image changes, loss, grief, death, as well as hope, change,
joy, insights, and so forth.
• Artist-designed psycho-architecture; healing spaces/healing
architecture—this art/architecture makes a conscious, inten-
tional, even a technical, precise scientific effort to integrate sym-
bol, myth, archetype, mystery, and legend into architectural and
environmental themes. Such art can be considered “ontological
design,” an integration of sacred geometry into architectural
structures so humans can “be” and feel differently as a way of
experiencing self-in-harmony, with the sacred universal field of
life’s energy for healing, wholeness, alignment, and so on. (Lafo,
Capasso, and Roberts 1994:9)
Caring Science seeks to combine science with the humanities and
arts. Caring Science is not neutral with respect to human values, goals,
subjective individual perceptions, and meanings. It is not detached
from human emotions and their diverse expressions, be they cultur-
ally bound or individually revealed.
The discipline of nursing—guided by a Caring Science orienta-
tion—seeks to study, research, explore, identify, describe, express, and
question the relation and intersection between and among the ethi-
cal, ontological, epistemological, methodological, pedagogical, and
praxis aspects of nursing, including health policies and administra-
tive practices. Thus, a Caring Science orientation seeks congruence
between and among clinical nursing science, humanities, the arts, and
the human subject matter and phenomena of caring knowledge and
practices.

ONTOLOGICAL “COmPETENCIES”: CARING LITERACY*
In moving from a discussion of art, beauty, the humanities, and sci-
ence, perhaps there is more awareness of the connection between

* The movement from the notion of “ontological competencies” to the con-
cept of “Caring Literacy” is influenced by Joan Boyce, Victoria University,
British Columbia, PhD dissertation: Nurses Making Caring Work: A Closet
Drama, and the discussion during her PhD final examination, June 2007.

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