SPECIAL SESSION: Caring Science in Asia

Description/Overview: This session includes two sub-sessions regarding caring science in Asia. The first portion of the presentation will examine caring experiences of nurses employed in hospice care and the intensive care unit (ICU) in the Philippines. The second sub-session will look at how Chinese nurses apply caring science using the concept of �gBenevolence�h. The first sub-session in session III, Caring Science in Asia, presents a study conducted in the Philippines that utilized Van Manen's method in analyzing the essential meaning of the nurses hospice and ICU experience. Six activities are used to examine and understand the experience: (1) turning to the nature of the lived experience; (2) exploring the experience as we live it, (3) reflecting on essential themes; (4) describing the phenomenon through the art of writing and rewriting;(5) maintaining a strong relation to the phenomenon; and (6) balancing the research context by considering parts and whole. The thematization process, used to detail the bits and pieces of reality, consists of four reflections: (1) profile of co-researchers, textual transcription of their experiences and individual themes; (2) composite themes arising from co- researcher's experiences; (3) interlaced theme on common ground and; (4) elicit eidetic insight or the vivid gist of the theme. The eidetic insight captured in the lived experiences of Hospice Nurses included Holistic Care and Touching the Soul. It represented the shared experiences of the co-researchers. Eidetic insight from the lived experiences of ICU Nurses can be presented by a Carative Transfiguration: Nurses moving harmoniously with Medical Technologies. ICU Nurses cannot work alone, they need the help of the life sustaining devices, and have adapted to the technology but they believe that machines cannot replace Nurses. The second sub-session of session III, presents a curriculum of nursing in Macau (a Special Administrative Region of China), which encompasses with the educational ideology of ��hFrom Personhood to Benevolence�h. The curriculum is designed from the high virtues inherited from Traditional Chinese culture. The philosophy of ��h�m�h in Chinese and the practical concept of nursing Caring are merged into the curriculum and intended to nurture the nursing students to become a professional nurse with both excellent character and competence of caring. Results from the client�fs perception of caring and students�fself-evaluated caring competence shown that success of the curriculum.