Caring

The veterans are a unique community shaped by past military experiences that may have positive and negative effects on their well-being as soldiers. With nearly half of the 18.4 million veterans in the United States living beyond 61 years, age-related physical and mental health conditions may impact the veterans’ well-being. Promoting veterans’ well-being has been studied extensively but literature on how they define it is scanty. It is critical to understand how veterans define well-being to inform future program development to address mental health needs. The purpose of this study is to discover the meaning and the lived experience of well-being among veterans. The methodology used for this study was a qualitative hermeneutic interpretative phenomenological approach to understand the meaning of veterans’ well-being. It allowed the phenomena to surface while exposing the essence of and the experience. The sampling method for recruiting participants was purposive sampling, with semi structured interviews conducted via ZOOM and direct observations at Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs) to obtain data. Fourteen veterans participated in this study, comprising eight males and six females with majority aged over 61 years. In terms of race/ethnicity, 64 % were White, 21% Hispanic and 15 % African American. With the use of Max van Manen’s analysis strategy, seven major themes emerged: (a) A Connection With A Special Bond To The Military Sisterhood/Brotherhood, (b) The Lingering Effects Of Military Service Continue To Simmer In Veteran life, (c) Feeling Grateful/Prideful Through Appreciation For Their Military Service, (d) Healthy Companionships/Relationships With Mutual Respect Yield Veteran Equilibrium, (e) Creating A Veteran Framily/Fraternity, (f) Self-fulfilment By Giving Back And Making A Life With A Purpose and (g) Veterans Living A Healthy Life Caring For Self. Six of the seven themes addressed the veterans’ well-being. The lingering effects have persisted and challenged the Veterans’ emotional well-being. However, they were able to express their military camaraderie even in the veterans’ life. Programs based on social relationships that allow connections with veterans and/or their significant others need to be established.

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the lived experience of families who donated their neonate’s organs at the end of life. The experiences of five mothers and one father were elicited from those who experienced this phenomenon. Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology served as the methodology as well as the guiding philosophy for this research study. Watson’s theory of Unitary Caring Science and the Caritas Processed provided the caring lens through which the research was completed. Deikelmann’s seven stage process for analysis was employed and through which four relative themes emerged: Enhancing the Fullness of the Baby, Celebrating the Ongoing Presencing of the Baby Within the Family, Ameliorating Grief through the Hope of Donation, and Being Embraced Within a Healing Environment. The four relational themes are represented with an aesthetic interpretation of the experience.

The decision to flee one’s homeland is a complex event that can have a life-long impact. The diaspora of the Cuban people has occurred throughout the United States since 1959. Their stories can shed light on the health challenge of leaving one’s homeland and can contribute to a body of knowledge that can inform nursing and health care. This study presents the qualitative findings from the stories of 13 participants who arrived in the U.S. from Cuba during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. A story inquiry research design, grounded in the theoretical underpinnings of story theory (Smith & Liehr, 2014), was utilized to explore the dimensions of the health challenge of fleeing one’s homeland, turning points and movement to resolve. Deductive and inductive analysis of the health challenge of fleeing one’s homeland revealed the dimensions of trauma related to the pre-migration, migration, and post migration experience, associated losses, and stigma. The upheaval induced stress in the lives of the participants tested their ability to cope. Managing day-to-day and utilizing internal and external resources, the participants moved to resolve the challenge of fleeing their homeland over time. Many turning points shaped the direction of their experience over decades and contributed to their ability to find meaning by becoming self-sufficient, recreating home, and reconstructing a sense of self-identity. Their unique experiences and stories have provided a voice to empower future studies to expand nursing science, influence empathy and understanding through education, foster awareness in practice, and inspire the potential for policy change for the well-being of refugee populations.

The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to give voice to an underserved and vulnerable population in Uganda, Africa to advocate for health priorities. Nineteen members of the village of Namagera, identified as a leper colony, were selected by community members and volunteered to participate in every element of this study. Descriptive phenomenology was the guiding philosophy and community-based participatory research methods and photovoice provided the lens for social action. Leininger’s theory of culture care diversity and universality (Leininger & McFarland, 2006) anchored the study in cultural caring and the community nursing practice model (Parker et al., 2020) kept the researcher grounded in the purpose of advancing the science of caring in community nursing. The research team included the researcher, the 19 participants, and six research assistants, who also served as language facilitators. Using photovoice methods, participants identified strengths and needs and used digital cameras to capture health concerns in the community. Eighty photos were analyzed by the participants and priorities were determined. The selected photos were placed on a photo board and shared with the whole community for input. Community members selected the health priorities and ranked them in importance: access to clean water, sanitation, disease, challenges for the elderly and disabled, lack of medical treatment, transportation, unemployment, and protection of the environment. The participants categorized the health priorities into three clusters of themes: basic needs, safety, and social/environmental. The themes were further incorporated into action plans identifying impeding factors for which the community would require outside assistance and promoting factors for which the community could solve themselves. Findings of this study illuminate the emergence of community empowerment: Community members found their voices, identified health priorities, and advocated for solutions.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among Healthy Work Environments (HWEs), nurse caring behaviors, and nursing-sensitive patient outcomes, specifically catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), patient falls with injury, and hospital-associated pressure injuries (HAPIs) Stage 2 and above in Magnet hospitals. A descriptive, cross-sectional, quantitative, study was conducted between January 1, 2018, and February 28, 2018, in seven Magnet-designated hospitals in a large faith-based system in the United States. A convenience, non-probability, purposive sample of permanently employed, direct-care RNs assigned to inpatient adult medical-surgical, telemetry, progressive care, stepdown, and critical care units were eligible to participate in the study. Three hundred and thirty-nine of 2632 eligible direct-care RNs participated in the study resulting in an overall response rate of 13.0% with a range of 5.5%–38.1% across hospitals. Nurse participants completed the AACN Healthy Work Environment Assessment Tool and the Nurse Caring Behaviors Inventory–24. Nursing-sensitive patient outcome data were obtained from patients cared for in the units during the study period.

The purpose of this study was to evolve a description of values of nurses who were recent graduates of associate degree nursing programs. Six new nurses who were employed in hospitals were asked for illustrations of nursing situations that described values important to their practice. Giorgi's method of interpretation for phenomenological studies was utilized for data analysis. Caring was the value that emerged as central to nursing. New graduates expressed this value as caring promoting growth. Subsumed within the value of caring for new nurses are hope, conscience, courage, honesty, humility, empathy and human connectedness.

The purpose of this phenomenological-hermeneutic study was to increase understanding of the caring experiences of the contemporary nurse executive practicing in four different types of health care systems. Nurse executives were asked to address the meaning of caring to them as a nurse executive. Five descriptive themes emerged from the participants: seeing things from a global perspective, advocating for the patient, providing an environment supportive of professional patient care, participating in the integration of services, and promoting a shared governance with the staff nurse or front line provider. An overall Interrelational Model of Health Care Delivery, derived from complexity science and chaos theory emerged from these descriptive themes.

A descriptive study of caring in nurse managers as described by staff nurses is presented. Five participants provided data from semi-structured, open ended, audiotape recorded interviews. The transcribed interview data were coded, concepts were identified, and the conceptual unit of meaning emerged. A conceptual model was developed and subsequently was analyzed in relation to Boykin's and Schoenhofer's (1993) Nursing as Caring Theory. It was discovered that staff nurses respect a nurse manager when she participates in direct nursing care, provides for the overall needs of the unit by negotiating with administrators, and nurtures nurses through listening to, encouraging, supporting and role modeling. Recommendations for nursing administration, practice, education and research are presented.

This study examines authentic presence. Authentic presence, as identified in the study, comes from a theory of nursing developed by Anne Boykin and Savina Schoenhofer, Nursing as Caring: A Model for Transforming Practice. Authentic presence must be viewed in a philosophical context in order to be fully understood in practice. This analysis of Nursing as Caring reveals philosophical underpinnings in the theory's foundation. The primary texts of Soren Kierkegaard and Gaston Bachelard, both philosophers, are used to develop a foundation upon which is built a preliminary aesthetic framework to guide the examination of authentic presence. It is proposed that this framework reflects the meaning of the essence of abstract concepts and is demonstrated in an analysis of two poetic expressions.

Tensions exist between the ideology of caring as a nursing practice ideal, and the corporately managed health care settings in which nurses work. The objective of this critical feminist ethnography was to understand these tensions by grounding them in nurses' experiences and perceptions. Data was gathered through ethnographic interviewing and participant-observations of a nurse key informant and her co-workers in the pediatric unit of a corporately managed acute care hospital. The data were analyzed according to the coding procedures and comparative method described by Strauss and Corbin (1990). Four characteristics of the corporate health care culture that conflict with nurses' practice ideals were identified: The Corporate Productivity Motive; The Priority of a Medical Regime Over Nursing Care; The Tolerance of Risk to Patient Safety; and The Hospitality Perspective. A critique of the patriarchal value structure that influences the health care system and recommendations for nursing practice, education, and research is provided.