Page 56 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

ca ra t i v e F a c t or s/ C a r i t a s P r o C e s s e s
directions for caring for human beings. Without honoring and attend-
ing to Caring Science knowledge and practices, nursing will not be
fulfilling its scientific, ethical, professional covenant with its public or
even with itself.

moving from CArAtive to Caritas
From an academic standpoint related to knowledge development
and theory evolution, one can consider that I used the technical pro-
cess of concept derivation (Walker and Avant 2005) and extension in
transposing and redefining Carative Factors to Caritas Processes. That
is, in working within the original field of Nursing and Carative think-
ing, I sought to redefine Carative from the parent field, Nursing, to
the new field of Caring Science with its explicit ethic, worldview, and
so on.
Thus, once the Carative concept was transposed from nursing
per se to Caring Science, Caritas/Caritas Processes emerged as a more
meaningful concept, generating new connections between Caring
and Love. The broader field of Caring Science and its expanded cos-
mology of unity, belonging, and infinity of the universal field of Love
allowed for a more meaningful redefinition for the phenomenon of
Caritas Nursing to result. As the transposition from Carative Nursing to
Caritas Caring Science occurred, a new vocabulary for an ontological
phenomenon was revealed, allowing for new ways of thinking about
caring and inviting a new image, even a metaphor, of caring-healing
practices to develop. Further, the new notion of Caritas offers a new
vocabulary/phenomenon for an area of inquiry, leading to additional
theorizing and knowledge development at the disciplinary level of
nursing and Caring Science.
Table 2.3 is a visual depiction of the process of Concept deriva-
tion for extending the theory of human caring from Carative nursing
to Caritas within a Caring Science context.
While each of the original Carative Factors has been transposed
and extended into the new language of Caritas, several core principles
are the most essential with respect to a change in consciousness. These
five cultivated areas of Caritas are those that help distinguish the core
differences between the notions of Carative and Caritas.

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