Acourse created for senior BSN students clarifies how to enact Jean Watson’s theoretical caring concepts in relation to self, others, peers/co-workers, nursing leadership, local/world communities, the environment, and web-based interactions. Students begin to build unique caring professional identities based on enhanced understanding of caring and through studying others’ professional caring activities. Aculminating project requires each student to create and enact a caring professional activity. This article presents a brief overview of Watson’s Theory of Human Caring and explores how it was applied in the creation of this course.

Nurse educators are faced with the challenge of teaching students to be both competent practitioners and compassionate caregivers. Nursing education largely focuses on technical proficiency, nursing knowledge, and evidence-based practice. As a result, there is less emphasis on caring, with an erosion of empathy in nursing students. Building on the foundations laid by Dewey, Buber, and Watson, nurse educators can design pedagogical approaches connecting cognitive and affective learning to increase empathy in students now and encourage compassionate practice in the future. Furthermore, nurse educators can serve as role models of compassionate care through engaging in authentic, caring relationships with students.

Empathy is one of the most important skills necessary for human connectedness, is essential for the nurse–patient relationship, and improves patient outcomes. Despite its significance, schools of nursing find it difficult to include empathy in curricula that are already burdened with content required by licensing agencies. Additionally, the literature lacks a consistent definition for empathy. The Walker and Avant method of concept analysis is used to explore empathy and offers a working definition with implications for future research.

This descriptive study explores the concept of caring in nursing education from the students’ perspective. Students were asked to share moments of caring that they experienced in a nursing course. A content analysis revealed a relational nature of humanistic caring demonstrated by the following themes: connectedness, presence, growth, and respect. Results identified caring as relational and being connected with other; that is, caring is grounded in nurse-educator-student relationships.

The authors propose that the evolution of the role development for generalist and advanced practice nursing is increasingly at odds with the contemporary scholarship of the discipline and ultimately betrays the unique identity and autonomy of the nursing profession. The development of the evidence-based practice movement in medicine and nursing is explored as the predominant theoretical framework guiding nursing practice. Professional challenges and recommendations to reclaim the unique nature of nursing are discussed with attention to the implications for the educator, clinician, and scholar.

A descriptive correlational study was undertaken to provide insight into the relationship between caring ability (innate caring) and competency with caring behaviors (professional caring) of student nurses. Currently, little research addresses these aspects of caring simultaneously. The study found significant correlations between caring ability and caring competency for first and fourth semester students, but no significant difference in caring ability between first semester and fourth semester students. The results suggest that nursing education significantly impacts the development of professional caring behaviors, but has little effect on innate caring ability. Higher caring ability scores were associated with increased caring competency

This cross-sectional, descriptive survey study aimed to examine the relationships among nursing students' perceptions of faculty caring, students' caring behaviors, and their confidence, satisfaction, and empathy in an undergraduate nursing program. The instruments included the Caring Behaviors Inventory-16 Student Version, Nursing Students' Perceptions of Instructor Caring, and students' confidence, satisfaction, and empathy. There were significant pair-wise relationships among students' perceptions of faculty caring, students' caring behaviors, satisfaction, confidence, and empathy. Students' perceptions of faculty caring were a significant predictor for students' caring behaviors. These findings are significant in future designing and implementing interventions to enhance students' learning experiences.

Preprofessional healthcare students may not be well-prepared to optimally care for patients with mental illness and need experience to develop skills. Empathy is critical for the success of daily interactions, teamwork, and cultural transmission. This research brief, mixed-methods, learning activity study combined before and after design with phenomenological designs. Students received instruction, engaged in discussion, then participated in a Hearing Voices Simulation. The Keirsma–Chen Empathy Scale and the Jefferson Scale of Empathy-Health Professions Students were used to measure empathy immediately prior to and following the experience and both showed mean empathy scores increased by a statistically significant level.