Jean Watson's Theory of Human Caring and the caring moment are based in part in the concepts of transpersonal psychology. This paper will provide a historical background around transpersonal psychology and how it relates to Watson's human caring moment. The purpose of explicating these humanities-based concepts is to support nurses and nurse educators in creating a deeper understanding of Watson's caring-healing moment as a time-space continuum, where the nurse's caring supports a mutually created environment for healing. The article provides useful background information, as well as outlining simple steps to revising nursing curricula so that they become supportive of nursing students' growth as transpersonal-caring beings.

The nursing shortage is continuing toward its projected peak in 2010. As a profession we seem unable to devise effective strategies to enhance growth and overcome this looming crisis. By focusing on predictable barriers using methods of reductionism, nurses may have forgotten the biggest barrier: the challenge of creating a holistic professional group presence and inclusive nursing stance. Without first addressing and solving internal paradoxical identity struggles, nursing will continue to try to overcome the multiple internal and external barriers that resulted in the current shortage. This article discusses the group dynamics that have fostered the cyclic loop of nursing shortage situations and explores the reflection and inquiry needed to formulate a cohesive national nursing group posture.

With the knowledge of psychoneuroimmunological responses and the stress of nursing students, as caring nurse educators, we have become ethically obligated to revise and re-vision our current nursing educational practices. Nurse educators should be motivated to create innovative caring-science curricular approaches, so that our nurses of the future are in turn supported in creating caring-healing sustainable practices (Watson, 2008). This paper details the outcomes from an RN-BSN program that implemented an integral-caring-holistic-science curriculum design in order to support students on their own healing journey. The program supported nurses in their ability to create caring-healing moments and spaces for patients, implement change in the workplace, and avoid the perils of burn-out related to low stress resilience, which is so common within the nursing profession (Clark, 2010; 2006; 2003).

In the 2002 original work discussing some of our professional issues that have contributed to the current nursing shortage, I concluded that until the profession examines and addresses some of the troublesome and paradoxical areas of our workplaces, we will continue to remain locked in our current cyclical strange loop of nursing shortages and a dissatisfied nursing working force. While the nursing shortage seems to have taken on a new context, given current global economic issues and healthcare reformation efforts, many of the professional issues I addressed in my original article remain pertinent to our professional growth and the future of an autonomous workforce of nurses. In this article, the writer will briefly review the current literature around the nursing shortage, reexplore our own role in contributing to the cyclical or strange loop shortage of professional nurses, and further discuss possible solutions for the growth of nursing as a profession. The aim of this article is to explore how we can address our professional identity issues in ways that will serve to manage the current challenges we face of attracting and retaining a stable workforce.