ReviewJournal of advanced nursing2026
Caring as a Generative Principle: Reconfiguring the Metaparadigm and Operative Mechanisms in Nursing Theory.
Review in Journal of advanced nursing, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
AIM(S): To develop a comparative meta-theory of nine caring theories by explicating their assumptions, operative mechanisms and consequences for nursing.
designQualitative meta-theoretical document analysis.
methodsCanonical texts were analysed using an intra-source strategy. Paginated statements were extracted and coded across assumptions, metaparadigm anchors (person, health, environment, nursing and care) and mechanisms linking caring intention to clinical action. Synthesis produced a typology and meta-theoretical propositions.
resultsCaring functioned as a generative principle that reorganised person, health, environment and nursing and care into distinct practice architectures. Six mechanism-based subfamilies were identified: transpersonal caritas; phenomenological and embodied clinical wisdom; ethical and relational caring; cultural and contextual caring; systemic and organisational caring; and operationalisable caring. Ten propositions linked assumptions to mechanisms and expected effects.
conclusionThe caring school is best understood as an ordered set of non-equivalent caring mechanisms rather than a single doctrine, supporting translation to practice design, education and congruent evaluation. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION AND/OR PATIENT CARE: Mechanism-based comparison can reduce conceptual ambiguity and improve alignment between caring interventions and intended outcomes. IMPACT: This study addresses the under-specification of how caring theories work. It provides a comparative typology and propositions that make mechanisms explicit, informing nursing education, theory development and caring-based practice in diverse settings. REPORTING
methodNo EQUATOR reporting checklist is available for meta-theoretical discursive analyses; the manuscript follows Journal of Advanced Nursing guidance for discursive papers. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: This study did not include patient or public involvement in its design, conduct, or reporting.
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