For Watson, treating a patient as a nurse was not just about giving out medication, it was about caring for a patient. Caring became a phenomenon for Watson as opposed to just thinking about ways in which to make a person feel better. The aspect of caring is critical to treating patients and Watson was the one who found ways to assess and influence the issue of caring in the nursing field. The main problem with caring was how it was measured. Caring, as it is such an abstract notion, is quite difficult to measure as it can mean something different to every individual.

Talking about "caring" is difficult. How does a person measure caring? How does a person talk about or measure the caring elements of nurses in the field? Caring is invisible, for the most part. One can talk about caring; one can show caring; but, how does one measure what is caring and what is not -- or how much caring there is or how little of it there is?

The wording "caring" is complex in and of itself. Some have questioned whether caring is a moral concern or whether caring is simply an obligation that one must deal with. What comes with caring? Is it more about values and morals or duties and obligations? For every single person there may be a different answer.

Nurses are thought of different than doctors. Doctors are the puzzle solvers. Doctors are able to put two and two...

Doctors are the people that we turn to for answers. Nurses, on the other hand, while they may have some answers to impart, are the people whom we turn to for comfort. Nurses must know, day in and day out, and with different patients, how they can impart caring. Nurses may also be constantly worried about how their caring factors are going to be judged. This is probably one of the most difficult aspects of being a nurse. As a doctor it may be easy to come in and take care of a situation and leave. Nurses must remain and they must find ways to comfort and heal an individual in a very emotional and sentimental way.
Watson's curative factors may influence the nursing student in a number of different ways. For one, Watson makes it so that the nursing student must think of the patient as humans whom they have a relationship with. The relationship becomes one of caring rather than of obligatory caring for. The curative factors forces nursing students to look at patients as individuals as opposed to just numbers or statistics. This fact can make all the difference in a patient's recovery.