Nursing has adapted his helping theory as a successful tool in nursing theory to improve the care provided to clients. Most clients require teaching and adapting, and his theory is a great measuring tool on the success of the client/nurse interaction. Dr. Carkhuff believes all relationship are helper/helpee relationships of some sort. Certainly, the client normally seeks out the nurse for help with an illness or other difficulties. The help that is really needed may not be easily perceived without the development of an empathetic relationship.
Dr. Carkhuff has also listed the skills required to be a successful helper. Those in the helping profession need to constantly review their methods to make sure they are effective with their clients. These include:
• Accurate empathy
• Genuine respect
• Concreteness
• Self disclosure
• Confrontation
• Immediacy
By improving these skills, a practitioner can become more expert in dealing with clients.
In his declining years. Dr. Carkhuff has set up a website at freedomblog.com in which he compiles articles and studies that relate to improving one’s freedom, be that economic, intellectual or physical. He addressed socioeconomic systems in The New Capitalism. A later book, Generativity Solutions came out in 2009. This book has been revised to include five volumes. Dr. Carkhuff has also published an Informational Generativity series that includes four volumes discussing society and the information age. Dr. Carkhuff’s focus continues to be the community and global solutions to age-old problems using his helping and human relationships theory. According to the Institute of Scientific Information, Dr. Carkhuff books remain among the 100 books most cited by social scientists in their clinical and publication work.
Sources:
Carkhuff.com/biblography. Accessed on August 13, 2019.
Carkhuff, R. R. The Generativity Solution: Building the New Economy. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, 2009
Carkhuff, R. R. Informational Generativity, Amherst, MA:HRD Press, 2010