Chapter 1 presents a discussion of key ideas that ground and contextualize nursing as caring. The most fundamental idea is that of person as caring with nursing conceptualized as a discipline. Our understanding of this foundation has been seasoned both from within nursing and from outside the discipline, but always with the purpose of deepening our understanding of nursing. When we have gone outside the discipline to extend possibilities for understanding, we have made an effort to go beyond application, to think through the nursing relevance of ideas that seemed, on the surface, to be useful. Chapter I and subsequent chapters draw on Mayeroff's (1971) caring ingredients, including: * Knowing--Explicitly and implicitly, knowing that and knowing how, knowing directly, and knowing indirectly (p. 14). * Alternating rhythm--Moving back and forth between a narrower and a wider framework, between action and reflection (p. 15). * Patience--Not a passive waiting but participating with the other, giving fully of ourselves (p. 17). * Honesty--Positive concept that implies openness, genuineness, and seeing truly (p. 18). * Trust--Trusting the other to grow in his or her own time and own way (p. 20). * Humility--Ready and willing to learn more about other and self and what caring involves (p, 23). * Hope--"An expression of the plentitude of the present, alive with a sense of a possible" (p. 26). * Courage--Taking risks, going into the unknown, trusting (p. 27). In Chapter 2, we present the theory in its most general form. We have resisted the temptation to include examples in this chapter for two reasons: first, because an example always seemed to lead to the need to further explain and illustrate; and second, because we wished to have a general expression of the theory, undelimited by particulars, and available to facilitate further theory development. Chapter 3 elaborates on the idea of the nursing situation, and illustrates the practical meaning of the theory in a range of particular nursing situations. This chapter will probably be most satisfying to the reader whose everyday nursing discourse is that of nursing practice. Some might find it useful to read this chapter first, before reading Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 4, we explore the practice of nursing as caring and discuss nursing service administration from the perspective of the theory. Chapter 5 addresses issues and strategies for transforming nursing education and nursing education administration based on nursing as caring. Our understanding of nursing as a human science discipline is the central focus of Chapter 6. In this chapter, we discuss the necessity of transforming models of nursing inquiry to facilitate the further development of nursing knowledge in the context of the theory of Nursing as Caring. We also share our commitment to the ongoing development of nursing as caring and directions we wish to take in living that commitment.