KINGSTON, R.I. — June 30, 2025 — The University of Rhode Island College of Nursing welcomed nurses and other health care professionals from around the world to the Rhode Island Nursing Education Center in Providence last week, hosting the International Association for Human Caring 46th Annual Conference June 26-28.

Dean Danny Willis said the URI College of Nursing was honored to host the conference with participants from countries including Canada, Italy, Norway, Nigeria, Brazil, and the Philippines, in addition to the U.S. The conference, which focused on “human caring in action,” included 47 podium presentations, 26 scientific posters, and 16 workshops, detailing theory-inspired research, education, practice, and policy projects.

Much of the conference theme revolved around the Theory of Human Caring developed by nursing professor Dr. Jean Watson, founder of Center for Human Caring and the Watson Caring Science Institute. The theory emphasizes “the importance of transpersonal caring relationships in nursing practice, focusing on the interconnectedness of the nurse, patient, and the broader environment.”

Presentations throughout the three-day conference—led by nursing professionals and faculty members from around the world, including some from URI—included such topics as enhancing empathy, caring and social justice in nursing; humanizing mental health care; caring for patients with pain and un-healthy substance use; therapeutic touch; and enhancing nursing communication, among many others. The sessions incorporated theories of the science of caring, including Watson’s theory of human caring, and the practice of “well-becoming,” which refers to the process of striving toward a meaningful and purposeful life, often involving the development of skills, connections, and a sense of belonging.

Dean Willis set the tone for the conference during his keynote address June 26, in which he highlighted the impact of well-becoming from a health care standpoint. His address served as a “clarion call for wide and deep support from our nursing, healthcare, healing, and humanitarian and scientific communities to embrace and advance well-becoming.”

“We have an opportunity to evolve with the times using our situations and experiences as leverage for betterment and transcending,” Willis said. “Even when some are not yet able to perceive, see, and embrace the value of well-becoming for themselves, nurse leaders who are committed to transforming wellbeing and environments can hold well-becoming for all as a high ethical commitment in support of all people’s highest evolution. The role of nursing is clear. Well-becoming requires caring communication and action based on our disciplinary focus. Our discipline, and therefore our profession, is focused on wholeness, wellbeing, humanization, consciousness, relationship, pattern, meaning and purpose, caring, healing, environments, and transcending. Nursing, as a caring-healing profession, provides a much-needed transforming presence in the world.”