An Ethical Framework for Nursing Practice: Parse’s Human Becoming Theory

Abstract

The Basis of Ethics in the Human Becoming Theory Originating in the human sciences, the human becoming theory breaks from the natural science tradition that underpins most of nursing and other health disciplines. Parse (1981, 1998) synthesized two foundational tenets of the theoryhuman subjectivity and intentionality-from existential phenomenology. Human subjectivity is the basis for the "unity of the subject-world changing mutual process" (Parse, 1998, p. 15). Intentionality is the tenet that humans are knowing and purposive beings always projecting themselves toward possibilities. Parse views humans as open and present with the universe. The term universe indicates the multidimensionality of human reality; it goes beyond the physicality of environment to encompass infinite possibilities of meaning. Humans experience existence as coexistence with others and the universe and cocreate situations with the universe. As free-willed beings, humans participate in shaping their universe through choosing situations and ways of being with situations. Moreover, although the outcomes of choices cannot be fully known, humans bear full responsibility for choices. Parse's (1998) three assumptions about human becoming describe the human-universe interrelationship as a mutual process. The first assumption is that human becoming is "choosing personal meaning in situation in the intersubjective process of living value priorities" (p. 29). A human being incarnates chosen meanings and past and present values. The second assumption is that human becoming is cocreating "rhythmical patterns of relating in mutual process with the universe" (p. 29). Continuously changing yet the same, rhyth

The Language of Loss When a Baby Dies Prior to Birth: Cocreating Human Experience

“…One of the themes emerging from the study, keeping the baby alive in thefamity memory, indicated the continuing-bonds perspective. Literature was found describing how the human becoming theory guided research and practice with parents whose babies died prior to birth (Pilkington, 1993(Pilkington, , 1999. Interestingly, Pilkington (1993) described a pattern ofconnecting-separating with the lost baby and how women lived this pattern over time.…”