Katie Ericksson’s Metaparadigms

 Human
Ericksson’s Theory of Caritative Caring is predicated on the conviction that a human being is an
entity of body, soul, and spirit. She also stated that the human being is essentially religious and
holy in connection to the concept of human dignity, which is to embrace the responsibility of
humans to serve others with love and to simply exist for them. She believes that it is important
to understand our nature of being. With this, human beings are ought to constantly change or
better themselves every day, thus, humans are never truly complete. It is understood that
individuals have multiple tendencies within himself, is engaged in a continuous battle, and
struggling with the tension of being and nonbeing. Ericksson views freedom as a dimension of
becoming. This idea is associated to Kierkegaard’s ideas of free choice and decision in the
human being’s various stages namely, esthetic, ethical, and religious stages. Fundamentally, the
human being is also believed to rely on communion. Individuals are dependent on one another,
and it is in the relationship between a concrete other (human being) and an abstract other
(some form of God) that the human being constitutes himself and his being. The human being
aims to find a fellowship where he can give and receive love, experience faith and hope, and be
aware that existing here and now is substantial. According to Eriksson, the patients that we
handle is capable of creating and imagining and has desires and wishes as well. Patients are also
able to experience phenomena. When the human being is admitted to the caring context, he or
she becomes a person that is suffering.
 Nursing
Caritas, the Latin word for the Christian love for humankind or charity, is the basic motive of
caring and the principal idea in most of her works. This can be traced through semantics,
anthropology, and the history of ideas. The latter indicates that the foundation of various caring
professions has been inclined to help and minister those who are suffering. It is also the core of
all teaching and development of human relations. The two basic forms of love in Caritas: eros
and agapé are combined. If the two forms of love are combined, generosity develops and
becomes the attitude of humans toward life. This is seen in a special ethical attitude in caring or
caritative outlook. Caritas constitutes the inner force that is connected with the mission to care.
A carer bears what Eriksson calls claritas, or the strength and light of beauty. Eriksson also thinks
that caring can only be understood by looking for its origin. The fundamentals of natural caring
are constituted by the idea of motherliness, which implies cleansing and nourishing, and
spontaneous and unconditional love.

Natural basic caring is also believed to be expressed through tending, playing, and learning in a
spirit of love, faith, and hope. Therefore true care is “not a form of behavior, not a feeling or
state. It is to be there—it is the way, the spirit in which it is done, and this spirit is caritative”.
Eriksson brings out that caring can be seen as different expressions of love and charity, with a
goal of minimizing suffering and serving life and health. In her later texts, she stresses that
caring also can be seen as a search for truth, goodness, beauty, and the eternal, and for what is
permanent in caring, and making it visible or evident. Eriksson emphasizes that caritative caring
relates to the innermost core of nursing. She differentiates caring nursing and nursing care.
According to Ericksson, nursing care is based on the nursing care process, and it represents good
 care only when it is based on the innermost core of caring. Caring nursing represents a kind of
caring without prejudice that emphasizes the patient and his or her suffering and desires.

An open invitation of affirmation that the other is always welcome is the core of a caring
relationship between a nurse and a patient. This act of caring expresses the innermost spirit of
caring and recreates the basic motive of caritas. In an ontological sense, the ultimate goal of
caring is not grounded on health only, however, it is much more deeper and includes human life
in its entirety.

 Environment
Katie Eriksson uses the concept of ethos in accordance with Aristotle’s idea that “ethics is
derived from ethos”. She believes that the ethos in caring science is comprised of the idea of
love and charity and respect and honor of the holiness and dignity of the human being. Good
caring and true knowledge are seen through ethos. Ethos and ethics belong together, and in the
caring culture, they are brought together and become one. In early 1990s, Eriksson reintroduced
the concept of “suffering” as a basic category of caring, she returned to the fundamental
historical conditions of all caring which is the idea of charity as the foundation of alleviating
suffering. This pertains to a change in the view of caring reality to a focus on the suffering
person. She started with the idea that suffering is an inseparable part of human life, and that it
has no exact reason or definition. Eriksson also makes a distinction between endurable and
unendurable suffering. Unendurable suffering paralyzes the human being, preventing him or her
from growing, while endurable suffering is compatible with health. The ultimate purpose of
caring is to alleviate or minimize suffering. Eriksson has described three different forms:
suffering related to illness, suffering related to care, and suffering related to life.
 Health
Ericksson describes the concept of health as the “soundness, freshness, and well-being”. Health
is being whole in body, soul, and spirit. Erickson developed various concepts regarding the laws
of health that have been summed up in an ontological health model. She views health as
movement and integration because health is always changing and is dependent on the vitality of
body, soul, and spirit. The direction of this movement is guided by the needs and desires of the
human being.
Nursing:

Rogers believed that nursing has two dimensions the first one being an organized body of
knowledge which is specific to nursing is arrived at by scientific research and logical analysis and
the second one is the art of nursing practice in which there is a creative use of science for the
betterment of the human beings and the creative use of its knowledge is the art of its practice.
Rogers also emphasized that the purpose of nursing is to serve people. It is the direct and
overriding responsibility to the society. The safe practice of nursing depends on the nature and
amount of scientific nursing knowledge the individual brings to practice which comprises of the
imaginative and intellectual judgment with which such knowledge is made in service to the man
kind.

Health:

According to Rogers, the concept of health is "an expression of the life process; they are the
characteristics and behavior emerging out of the mutual, simultaneous interaction of the human
and environmental fields". She considers health and illness as part of the sane continuum. The
multiple events taking place along life's axis denote the extent to which man is achieving his
highest health potential and their expressions vary from greatest health to those conditions
which are incompatible with the maintaining life process. Rogers also uses the concept of health
as a value term based on the culture of a person. It denotes the behaviors that are of high value
and low value.

Environment:

The environment, as stated by Rogers, is an "irreducible, pan dimensional energy field identified
by pattern and manifesting characteristics different from those of the parts. Each environmental
field is specific to its given human field. Both change continuously and creatively”. This field
coexist and are integral. The environmental and human fields mentioned previously are said to
be identified by wave patterns that manifests continuous change. The manifestation emerge
from this field and are perceived.

Person:

Roger defines the person as a unitary human being that is "irreducible, indivisible, pan
dimensional (four-dimensional) energy field identified by pattern and manifesting characteristics
that are specific to the whole and which cannot be predicted from knowledge of the parts" and
"a unified whole having its own distinctive characteristics which cannot be perceived by looking
at, describing, or summarizing the parts". People and their environment are perceived as
irreducible energy fields integral with one another and continuously creative in their evolution
within a conceptual model that is specific to the concerns in nursing.