Nursing is the science of caring! This well-known adage has been part of our nursing conversations throughout generations of nursing practice. We have come along way and made headways in our profession, developing theories, leading research, changing practice, negotiating the new technology. We have seen remarkable transformations in the nursing profession; however, we still grapple with the tension of how we translate our nursing knowledge into a caring practice for people; more skilfully caring for people of other cultures, and more effectively caring for Australia’s First Peoples. Now our conversations are filled with the increasing burden of practicing in a climate of rapid social, political, and economic change impacting on our nursing education and it’s flow on effect in our practice. Some of us question whether nursing is the place where we want to be now. Somewhere in this rapid growing professionalism, we have lost sight of the foundation of the art of caring, it has left us bereft of the caritas of nursing care, a foundational pillar of nursing.
My keynote presentation invites nursing colleagues to sit with me and take up a metaphorical cup of consideration of an infusion of nursing science and caritas and begin another conversational thread examining and considering a nursing practice paradigm through an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander world view perspective. This metaphorical cup challenges us to seek ways for engaging in meaningful and safe nursing care practice in our ever changing and challenging professional identity and the way we engage in our practice with the world.