What it Means to Care: UIW Hosts 2024 Sr. Charles Marie Frank Endowed Lecture

On Thursday, Oct. 3, The Ila Faye Miller School of Nursing and Health Professions (SNHP) welcomed 450 aspiring healthcare practitioners and guests to the UIW McCombs Center Rosenberg Sky Room for the 2024 Sr. Charles Marie Frank Endowed Lecture. Current SNHP and UIW health professions students and faculty were welcomed to attend the event to share their healthcare-related research through poster presentations and listen to a lecture delivered by this year's guest speaker, Kristen Swanson, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean emerita and professor from Seattle University College of Nursing.

This annual event is hosted in honor of Sr. Charles Marie Frank, CCVI, who earned one of the first Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degrees in the late 1930s. SNHP was founded in 1931, making it the first accredited school west of the Mississippi River to offer a baccalaureate degree in Nursing, and the first in the region to offer degrees to women. Its mission of extending the healing ministry of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, through the educational preparation of health professionals has remained present as it continues to prepare the next generation of nurses.

At the school, aspiring nurses are encouraged to emphasize compassionate care of the whole person as they develop the skills and practices needed to provide effective healthcare to patients in need. The topic of "caring" is not unfamiliar to Swanson.

Swanson's lecture centered around her "Theory of Caring," which has contributed tremendously to nursing science and nursing education by examining the relationship between the quality of care provided by nurses and patient wellbeing. Her work sheds light on how the conductivity of a healthcare professional is just as essential as the logistics of healthcare practices.

To understand how to provide quality care, one of the first questions Swanson had to ask was, what does it mean to be human?

She recognized that each person comes with a body with all its physical limitations and possibilities and a mind capable of thoughts and a connection to something bigger; whether perceived as God, spirit, love, the universe or something else.

"My mentor used to always say if you begin with the very notion of what it means to have personhood, and you can accord the status and person to every individual you meet, you can't help but access your own capacity for caring," shared Swanson. "When you think of what it means to have personhood, you think about that human being who came into the world, body, mind and spirit. If we see everybody who walks in front of us as another person yet to be known, that's where our access to caring happens."

During her lecture, Swanson shared that for her dissertation, she interviewed 20 mothers who experienced a miscarriage, with the intent of better understanding what one goes through during such a loss. Her mentor encouraged her to take her research a step further by asking her interviewees about how they felt cared for during a notably challenging time.

One interviewee noted that one of the most challenging aspects of experiencing a miscarriage is having others not understand the deep pain it brings.

"We've got to take the position of the person we're serving and get what their story is before we can even begin to be seen as caring," noted Swanson.

Thus began her development of her "Theory of Caring". For years, she researched and further studied how care is perceived and how to best offer it to those in need. This ultimately resulted in the development of a comprehensive theory that guides nurses in providing holistic care in five essential categories:

1. Knowing: Striving to understand an event that another is going through

1. Being With: Being emotionally present for another

1. Doing For: Doing for the other that they would do for themselves

1. Enabling: Providing the necessary information, support and validation so that the other feels capable of getting through

1. Maintaining Belief: Sustaining faith and the capacity of the other to come through and face the true meaning

"If we can know, be with, do for, enable and maintain belief in another person, in our presence they will feel understood, valued, safe, comforted, capable and hopeful for the future," stated Swanson.

As Swanson held the attention of the next generation of health care professionals, one could see as they each considered how they have shown care and how they could perhaps show better care within their personal lives and professional careers. The lecture contributed to UIW's Mission of preparing concerned enlightened citizens who will be capable of extending Jesus Christ's love and care to others in need.

"I am very pleased with the success of the Sr. Frank lecture this year," expressed Dr. Danuta Wojnar, dean of SNHP. "From the excellent collaboration with various departments preceding the lecture to the number of poster presentations to the large turnout by faculty, students and staff... Dr. Swanson's lecture about caring and healing offered universal truth applicable in real life situations, beyond healthcare settings. I believe everybody got something special from it."

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