Caring incidents--a gift to the present.

The quality of health care in the United States has become a topic of national debate in the 1990s. Efforts are under way to eliminate inequities by providing educational strategies to monitor the administration of health care activities. In this article the author links the current proposals in the administration of health care to organizational strategies and to the humanistic approach to caregiving in nursing. Specific examples demonstrate how first-year nursing students are encouraged to integrate structured caring incidents into their clinical experiences. The article relies on the philosophical base provided by nurse theorist, Joyce Travelbee. She expressed concern that nursing care in institutions lacked compassion and needed a "humanistic revolution with a focus on caring" (Travelbee, 1991, p. 2).