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To develop a comparative meta-theory of nine caring theories by explicating their assumptions, operative mechanisms and consequences for nursing.
Qualitative meta-theoretical document analysis.
Canonical 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.
Caring 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.
The 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.
Mechanism-based comparison can reduce conceptual ambiguity and improve alignment between caring interventions and intended outcomes.
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.
No EQUATOR reporting checklist is available for meta-theoretical discursive analyses; the manuscript follows Journal of Advanced Nursing guidance for discursive papers.
This study did not include patient or public involvement in its design, conduct, or reporting.
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