Shared Success: The Challenge of Caring for Today's Health Education Educators

Caring has been identified as one of the normative values of nursing and health care. In many ways, caring is seen as being at the core of the profession. Although defined in various ways by numerous scholars (Gaut, 1983;Leininger, 1988;Parse, Coyne, & Smith, 1985;Roach, 1984;Watson, 1979), caring is generally recognized as a "mutual human process with identifiable behaviors" (Hanson & Smith, 1996, p. 105).Leininger (1981)suggests that caring be examined by identifying specific activities that are aimed at assisting, supporting, or enabling another person. Watson, whose name is most associated with the concept of caring in nursing, has developed a list of carative factors based upon the caring behaviors that can be observed between nurses and their patients.