The nursing as caring theory asserts that knowing emerges from within the nursing situation and that knowledge can be transformed for nursing purposes into nursing science, which evolves from nurturing persons living caring and growing in caring. The purpose of this paper is to describe research-as-praxis methodology, as it was applied to the nursing as caring theory in a recent study, as an effective way to simultaneously engage in research, practice, and theory application. Because caring is a central exemplar of nursing, it is appropriate to consider the usefulness of this research-as-praxis methodology to examine questions that emerge from within any nursing situation, and it is cogent to suggest that this research methodology would be applicable and appropriate for generating nursing knowledge using the broad expanse of nursing theoretical perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a pedagogical approach to uncovering meaning in narratives of nursing practice through the natural turn to the aesthetic. Nurses in practice, accustomed to moving at warp speed, often come back to graduate programs seeking another way of being. The pedagogical challenge for faculty is to provide an opening for students to slow down and to find meaning in their nursing. The challenge for students is to experience new ways of being. Aesthetics is the realm of opening in which students can fully engage in valuing meaning and connecting to their core beliefs.

Technological competency is an expression of caring in nursing. Nurses need to understand patients’ emotions and understand patients’ worlds as if these were their own. This is “empathic understanding.” Electroencephalograms (EEGs) were performed on five healthy participants while viewing an emotionally charged “sentimental” movie. EEG changes were collected and compared with data during a less emotionally charged situation. Apower map and spectrogram analyses of EEGs showed that alpha bands at the occipital region were specifically pronounced during the emotionally charged state. This study suggests that expressions of empathic understanding exists and are evidenced by EEG data, and that technological competency as caring in nursing is an expression of caring in nursing.