Okay, so for this module, we are going to look at Caritas Process 5 and 6. Caritas Process 5 relates to being present and supportive of the expression of positive and negative feelings. And Caritas Process 6, which I have to say is one of my favorites, talks about the creative use of self and all ways of knowing as part of the caring process. We'll look at Caritas Process 5 first. So in this Caritas Process... Jean Watson is talking about how important it is for us to allow our patients the space to be able to express themselves, whether that expression is, thank you, the care I'm getting here is fabulous, I'm so grateful for everything that you're doing, or if the expression is, I'm so angry, I feel like things aren't happening the way that they should be happening, sharing things that maybe are more difficult to listen to.
either of those, for the patient to feel heard, you need to be listening authentically. So you need to be fully present. You need to be mindful. You need to physically be present, mentally be present.
And you need to stay engaged with your patient. Sometimes it's being in silence with your patient and that's okay too. You really have to try to adopt their frame of reference and really, really importantly, try not to judge people. Nobody wants to be judged. So if you're able to engage with your patient from an open perspective and let them share and not judge their feelings as good feelings or bad feelings, that really gives a lot to your patient.
This Keratose process is really intrinsically related to Keratose process for the developing of healing relationships. But we're still going to take a look at this independently because Dr. Watson believes this process is so basic that sometimes it might be taken for granted and not attended to in a professional practice. So again, it is so important to allow patients space to express their feelings and listen to their story.
Dr. Watson stresses that helping another to non-judgmentally express positive and negative feelings without feeling defensive or threatened by rejection and criticism is therapeutic. So just this action of listening to your patient is a therapeutic thing that you can do. As a Concordia nursing student, you are encouraged to create a safe, authentic space for your patient to express both the positive and the negative emotions that they may be experiencing.
Some of the ways that you can put this into action, again, sometimes patients just need to be heard. So that patient that is labeled as a difficult patient, perhaps they need a listening ear and you'll see a huge difference that that makes. So if you can encourage your patient to share their thoughts and feelings, And keep yourself calm when either a patient or a family member expresses anger. It's generally not anger towards you.
It's anger towards a situation or what is happening. So being able to be present with that is really important. That means you can't reduce your presence when a patient has a difficult moment. And that's not as easy as it sounds.
So if the patient is talking about something very, very difficult, something that they have experienced, it might be very uncomfortable for you to listen to that. But. If you're enacting this Caritas process, that's what you're doing. You're letting them share those feelings.
You're helping them to channel those difficult emotions. You're letting them express their pain, their sadness, their fear, all of that without judgment. And of course, this could be true for positive emotions as well, but they just aren't quite as difficult to be present for. Some of the things that you can ask your patient, and this comes directly from this chapter in Jean Watson's book, is how are you?
What did you mean when you said whatever they said? How do you feel in this moment? What do you need in this moment? Tell me more or I'm here for you. Those are all things that if you say that to someone else, they feel they have permission to continue to share whatever it is that they are sharing with you.
We're also going to look at Caritas Process 6. So Caritas Process 6 really talks about how can we use our own creativity. It invites us to engage our full self. all our available resources and come up with creative solutions to challenging situations. And like I said, this is one of my favorite because I think as a nurse, it's so key to realize that not all the answers are in the book and that you, with some creativity, you might be able to solve some problems. It requires a curiosity or requires an unbiased observation and a desire to treat each person individually.
So you really have to learn about your patient in order to. enact creativity to solve problems with them. When we talk about this in action, we're talking about, you know, again, getting to know the individual, getting an understanding of what's important to them, and then trying to creatively develop individualized solutions. So with that, if you look at the picture that is up on the corner here with the arm, sorry, I'm trying to get a video ready for you guys, with the arm here that has kind of a crochet knitted thing, looks just like a colorful arm sleeve on it. This is something that a friend of mine sent this picture to me that someone had created for her mom who has dementia and tends to pick at her skin and pick at anything that's attached to her.
And so she put this on her mom's arm. And instead of picking at herself or picking at her IV or picking at anything else, she would play with the buttons and the strings and the little bobbly things that were on it. And so I just thought that was such a great example of creativity of a way that you can keep a patient from harming themselves without restraining them, without repeatedly giving them the same instructions, but just by diverting their attention somewhere else.
So I thought that was pretty powerful. I'm going to share with you guys a video as well. It may seem kind of odd to you that Quasimodo is down here on the slide because Gene Watson and Quasimodo don't seem like they have a whole big connection there.
But I have a video I want to share with you from several years ago when one of our local hospitals enacted Gene Watson's theory. They did some video presentations to the staff to kind of give staff an idea of what each of these Keratos processes was about. So this video is in relation to Keratos process six.
My daughter, when she was very, very young, is the actress, the little tiny actress in this video. So I think that's kind of a funny story as well. But I think it helps you get an idea of how sometimes you have to go a different route with creativity than just trying to go the traditional route with the answers that are in the book. So I'm going to see if this will play for you.
And we are going to cross our fingers that it does. An autistic child arrived at the civilian for dental surgery. He was afraid and didn't understand what was happening. As a result...
The staff was presented with a challenging situation. Please notice the creative way that the nurse demonstrated caring. This is just but one instance that is demonstrated daily by the nurses at St. Joseph Hospital. Katie, what are you drawing?
Climbing on a... Oh, okay. Oh, okay, now it's my turn? Okay, I'm not as good of an artist as you, but let me see.
I'll draw a picture of myself, because I think I am beautiful. I made myself with longer hair than I have. Okay, what does that look like?
Quasimodo. Okay. Okay, your turn. Hi, this is Katie. Hi Katie.
And Diana. This is the calmest that Katie has been. We've given her 10 milligrams of nasal Versed and it took four of us. to hold her down to give it. The only thing that she's happy doing is sitting here in this chair dry.
We couldn't even keep her in the bed. So what did the physician say? Well I called Dr. Ramirez to tell him that we couldn't get her back in the bed and he doesn't want to give her ketamine.
He just wants us to figure something out. So do you have any ideas? Well let's try this. Okay. Katie, come draw with me.
There should be a hat. Maybe Diana can give us both a hat. There you go. And we need one more because I want to wear a hat just like Katie's. Here's matching hats.
Okay, what's that a picture of, Katie? Quasimodo. Okay. I'm going to be putting a warm blanket over you. You're a much better artist than I am, Katie.
I'm going to lift this up. I'm going to put the side rails up. Okay, I think we're ready to go.
I think we're ready to go. All right, so hopefully you see that that was a way of enacting creativity with care. So I'm not saying that the answer to any difficult patient is that you should climb into a gurney with them. But you can see in this situation, this was the only way to get this young individual in for a surgery that she desperately needed.
And so some creativity was used there. I also have a little bit of safety concern. It's interesting. I was there when the video was being made and I didn't even see it at the time because I think I was just so fascinated with the whole process. But there's a safety concern in that video too.
So I really, if you didn't notice that, if something didn't make you cringe and think, oh, wow, why didn't they do that? Then I want you to just replay that video and look at that because your nurse eye needs to look at it and see, wow, that's not safe. We shouldn't be doing that. So hopefully that helped you understand the creativity part a little bit.
All right. And then as usual, I'll wrap up those two and say that Caritas Process 5 and 6 invite us to encourage our patients, students, faculty, co-workers, anyone that you're with, to express yourself and use all ways of knowing to develop creative solutions. And again, thank you for taking the time to view this.