Holistic nursing is a nursing practice that aims to provide healing to the whole person (Frisch & Rabinowitsch, 2019). Traditionally, nursing was grounded on holistic principles incorporating healing therapies and natural remedies. Traditional nursing applied poultices, fomentations, salves plasters and ointments to achieve whole person healing. Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, understood the inseparability of the environment and people’s health in achieving holistic nursing care for a patient (Garmy et al., 2021). She thus emphasized the importance of pure water, cleanliness, pure air, and light in maintaining holistic nursing care.
The holistic principles of nursing care that included natural therapies formed a foundation for early nursing practice. As technology advanced, the holistic principles introduced by Florence Nightingale were largely abandoned in the mid part of the 1900s (Garmy et al., 2021). As time elapsed, technology superseded human connection, and nursing began transforming from a service profession to profit business. During this time, nurses began to feel frustrated by their inability to deliver holistic quality care to the needs of their patients. During this period, the American holistic nurses association (AHNA) was introduced and served to re-establish holistic care for patients.
The AHNA was formed to provide credentialing programs in holistic nursing and offer multiple certification options for nurses based on their level of education. AHNA also offers programs in universities across the U.S whose criteria are based on integrating holistic principles, concepts, theories and practices in nursing. This focus ensures that holistic nursing is practised in any setting, including academia, hospice care centres, hospitals and private practice. The AHNA has thus gone further to recognize holistic nursing as a distinct specialty in nursing with defined standards and scope of practice.
Holistic nursing applies a variety of integrative and healing therapies. They often apply visualization, deep breathing techniques, imagery, aromatherapy, stress management and subtle energy therapies to patients under their care (Frisch & Rabinowitsch, 2019). Holistic nurses also understand the scope of practice for non-conventional and conventional health care providers and medicine. By conversing with the treatment alternatives, holistic nurses provide guidance, information and counselling to help people coordinate and navigate the complexities they face between the various healing professionals and health care. As care delivery continues to become more complex over time, holistic nurses help coordinate care between multiple providers and patients. They coordinate service delivery and enable healing and care in health care.
The importance of holistic nursing care entails contributing to patients’ satisfaction with the care delivered to them and, in turn, enables them to accept and assume responsibility for their health. Holistic nursing also enables a better understanding of true needs in illnesses and their effects on patients. Following an illness, complex social, psychological and cultural needs adversely affect patients’ ability to perform daily activities and disturb their balance (Frisch & Rabinowitsch, 2019). Holistic nursing care addresses patients’ social, physical, emotional and spiritual needs and helps them to handle their illnesses and thus improve their lives. Embracing holistic nursing practice enables nurses to increase their knowledge by helping them to identify therapeutic potentials that apply while caring for different patient needs. Comprehensive knowledge of holistic nursing enables nurses to develop professional autonomy that helps them consider patients’ needs more scientifically and systematically. It also enables an understanding of the meaning of consensus, thus facilitating its application between patients and nurses.
In conclusion, holistic nursing care philosophy is based on a humanistic view and unity of the patient’s needs. It is an essential aspect of healthcare as it describes interventions and approaches to satisfy patients’ emotional, physical, spiritual and mental needs. Holistic nursing care can thus be applied in every area of nursing.
References
Garmy, P., Clausson, E. K., Janlöv, A. C., & Einberg, E. L. (2021). A philosophical review of school nursing framed by the holistic nursing theory of Barbara Dossey. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 39(3), 216-224. https://doi.org/10.1177/089801012110066
Frisch, N. C., & Rabinowitsch, D. (2019). What’s in a definition? Holistic nursing, integrative health care, and integrative nursing: report of an integrated literature review. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 37(3), 260-272. https://doi.org/10.1177/0898010119860
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