Caring experiences of nurse educators

Central to nursing practice today is the theme of caring. Yet nursing faculty are themselves experiencing a lack of caring. Faculty frequently voice the complaint that no one in the school of nursing work environment cares about them as they struggle to balance the demands of work with the demands of a personal life. A descriptive phenomenological approach was used to facilitate understanding of the caring experiences of nurses who teach. The question guiding this study was, "How do nurse educators experience caring in their work situations?" Nomination and purposive sampling techniques were used to select seven nurse faculty as participants. Unstructured interviews, lasting approximately one hour, were audiotaped and transcribed. Colaizzi's (1978) methodology was used to analyze the resulting data. Resulting themes included: 1) Caring is Connection and 2) Caring is a Pattern of Establishing and Maintaining Relationships. The use of narrative, journaling, and dialogue are suggested as techniques that will help nurse educators experience caring in schools of nursing.