Caring: An Essential Human Need, contains the papers of the first three National Caring Conferences, presenting substantive ideas, theories, and research findings about care and caring.
Historically, nursing and other health science curricula have neglected the concept of care as a part of nursing. Limited research on care and caring and limited faculty interest have made care the unknown phenomenon of health. The National Caring Conferences were founded as a response to the lack of knowledge and limited research on the subject. The fifteen papers in this volume address the topics of the three conferences: The Phenomena and Nature of Caring, Analysis of Caring Behaviors and Processes, and Characteristics and Classification of Caring Phenomena.