Another research thread has focused on the development of an approach to identifying and languaging outcomes of nursing guided by the theory of Nursing as Caring (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 1997; Schoenhofer & Boykin, 1998a, 1998b). Within the context of the theory, the idea of outcomes has been reconceptualized as "values experienced in the nursing situation." Several case studies illuminated a dialogical form of praxis involving nurse, patient and researcher that revealed values experienced by patients and their nurses. Values experienced by families, health care administrators and systems were also uncovered as the caring created in the nursing situation was found to resonate beyond the immediate nurse-patient relationship. This line of research has demonstrated that while traditional economic valuation can be calculated, the value of caring in nursing can and must be more clearly explicated in human terms. For example, one case study of home health nursing found that the economic value of six nursing visits produced a health care cost savings of $5,709, primarily by obviating the necessity of trips to the emergency department of the local hospital. Through this unique research approach, the human value of the six visits was identified and languaged in terms that clearly demonstrate the direct, unmediated worth of nursing care--to the one nursed, the family, the nurse and the larger circle of health care systems. The patient and family gained the important value of confidence through the caring of the home health nurse; with the nurse's commitment to caring, they gained faith in themselves, their ability to deal with new health-related situations as they arose, faith that they wouldn't be left alone, faith that they were known as persons valuable in their own right and worthy of care. This is the value of nursing, the reason nursing exists as a distinguishable social and human service. Nurses can learn to assert the human value of nursing, and in fact, nurses must accept the responsibility for bringing the human value of care to the forefront. Re-establishing the primary position of care in the health care arena depends on nurses speaking out in clearly human terms about the meaning and value of care, using the language of caring knowledgably and without apology.