Voluntary inpatient psychiatry can feel coercive when patients experience informal pressure, discharge leverage, legal status confusion, or threatened involuntary detention. This theoretical article reframes constrained voluntariness as a caring process disruption and relational rupture risk, not only a consent problem. Drawing on Tronto’s ethics of care and literature on perceived and informal coercion, it proposes the agency–caring pathway model: constraint signals, patient meaning-making, relational rupture risk, caring repair moves, and care receiving outcomes. Implications emphasize truthful communication, microchoice, patient voice, equity vigilance, ethical documentation, education, and research.
Nursing students confront relentless academic and emotional pressures that can erode well-being and professional identity. The purpose of this theory-informed narrative analysis was to illuminate these pressures through the artistic text “I Can’t Breathe” and frame its insights with caring science theory, which catalyzes pedagogical change. The poem is positioned as lived experience data, hermeneutically mapped using Mayeroff’s caring ingredients, Roach’s Five Cs, and Boykin & Schoenhofer’s nursing as caring theory. Concepts are then cross-referenced with recent phenomenological findings on student stress. The narrative traces a path from burnout to renewal via trust, compassion, and supportive relationships, paralleling key caring constructs and empirical themes on wellness barriers, coping, and help-seeking. Findings of this analysis suggest that narrative art can be a powerful way for students to share lived experience. Pairing this bravery and vulnerability with educators and practitioners who embrace the caring science with authenticity can be transformative for the future of our nursing workforce. Such an academic and professional climate can normalize help-seeking and cultivate coping skills that will benefit nurses throughout their careers.
This poetic expression weaves together the migration stories of Layla, a Syrian refugee woman, and Olena, a Ukrainian newcomer woman. Through vivid imagery, it traces their losses, resilience, and the small objects they carried as lifelines of memory. Their voices capture the dislocation of war, the uncertainty of borders, and the fragile hope of new beginnings. Canada becomes both a destination and a promise of safety, renewal, and possibility. These stories remind us that arrival is not an ending but the beginning of rebuilding, often through homestay hosting, where refugee women begin to write their next chapters within the community.
We applied Kristen Swanson’s theory of caring to create and implement two surveys assessing students’ needs post-Hurricane Helene. Survey response rates varied (30%–87%) by program. The Helene Check-In survey provided faculty with knowledge of their students’ physical and mental condition and revealed that students felt valued, safe, and comforted by faculty. The Readiness to Return to Class survey showed that online students were more prepared to resume classes than on-campus students, and student responses illustrated the healing outcomes: understood, capable, and hopeful. The assessments effectively communicated caring and promoted well-being. Future disaster response can benefit from such preparedness and assessment planning.
