| Safe, effective, affordable care requires people and communities to access organizations and individuals that empower consumers to become active partners in preventive care. Restoring and maintaining health, in cooperation with each other, affects quality of life. Values of compassion and respect promote health in societies that shift awareness and serve to advance human potential. Quality of life in patients and populations, empowered through caring practices, is considered an outcome of interest in nursing. Yet little is known regarding the process of care that achieves empowerment as no qualitative measures of patient empowerment appear in the nursing literature. Articulating nursing's caring contribution in practice serves to accelerate a change in consciousness. Returning to the caring core of nursing in a conscious, mindful way is essential to achieve better outcomes. It is the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) scholar that seeks to form the bridge between education and research to practice. To bring about a shift in consciousness, the action needed for this project was a descriptive triangulated observational design through a quantitative tool, participatory action research, and qualitative evaluation employing methods of the Vancouver School of doing phenomenology. The purpose of the project was to link two concepts DNP scholars perceive, caring and empowerment. The DNP scholars practice the healing relationship through the process of caring as a sign of contradiction for the protection of love. Their practice of authentic nursing provides voices of empowerment in vulnerable patients/populations.;Keywords: healing relationship, DNP, caring, empowerment. . |
