Anchored in one of the most dramatic social shifts in healthcare history, a Theory of Integral Nursing can inform and shape nursing practice, education, research and policy-local to global-to achieve a healthy world. A Theory of Integral Nursing, informed by integral theory, presents the philosophical foundation and application of an integral worldview and process. This theory also recognizes Florence Nightingale's philosophical foundation and legacy, healing and healing research, the meta-paradigm in a nursing theory (nurse, person(s), health and environment [society]), 6 patterns of knowing (personal, empirics, aesthetics, ethics, not knowing, sociopolitical), and other nonnursing theories.
While health care often focuses on acute or chronic illness, the elements necessary for good health are far more complex than we tend to recognize. Florence Nightingale understood this complexity and wrote extensively on the myriad social and environmental factors that influence well-being. Today these factors are termed “health determinants” and undergird the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article explores how nurses can contextualize the SDGs within their daily practice and create holistic plans of care for patients, families, communities, and nations.
Objective: Health care professionals report a lack of skills in the psychosocial and spiritual aspects of caring for dying people and high levels of moral distress, grief, and burnout. To address these concerns, the "Being with Dying: Professional Training Program in Contemplative End-of-Life Care" (BWD) was created. The premise of BWD, which is based on the development of mindfulness and receptive attention through contemplative practice, is that cultivating stability of mind and emotions enables clinicians to respond to others and themselves with compassion. This article describes the impact of BWD on the participants.Methods: Ninety-five BWD participants completed an anonymous online survey; 40 completed a confidential open-ended telephone interview.Results: Four main themes-the power of presence, cultivating balanced compassion, recognizing grief, and the importance of self-care-emerged in the interviews and were supported in the survey data. The interviewees considered BWD's contemplative and reflective practices meaningful, useful, and valuable and reported that BWD provided skills, attitudes, behaviors, and tools to change how they worked with the dying and bereaved.Significance of results: The quality of presence has the potential to transform the care of dying people and the caregivers themselves. Cultivating this quality within themselves and others allows clinicians to explore alternatives to exclusively intellectual, procedural, and taskoriented approaches when caring for dying people. BWD provides a rare opportunity to engage in practices and methods that cultivate the stability of mind and emotions that may facilitate compassionate care of dying patients, families, and caregivers.
Holistic nursing is founded on the values of integrality and the awareness of whole-people and whole-system interconnectedness. These concepts are foundational to the broader global health agendas and initiatives of our time, which seek to improve human, animal, and planetary health. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development represents the most remarkable transnational initiative in history: a 15-year plan (2015-2030) rallying the efforts of all countries, governments, and concerned citizens worldwide to foster human–planet thriving and survival. The purpose herein is to substantiate the United Nations 2030 Agenda as a holistic nursing priority and theory-practice opportunity for current and future professional maturation. This article provides a background of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a discussion regarding their relevance to holistic nursing, and an explanation of the essential nature of partnerships in attaining each of these “Global Goals.” We link the discussion of the SDGs directly to the American Holistic Nurses Association’s Core Values and identify implications for practice, education, research, and policy. Holistic nursing is ideally situated throughout the health care system and in the broader global context to advocate and advance the SDGs.
Nurse coaches are responding to the mandate of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)—the foundational philosopher of modern nursing—to advocate, identify, and focus on factors that promote health, healthy people, and healthy communities that are recognized today as environmental and social determinants of health.1,2The Institute of Medicine report3 and other health initiatives suggest the need for increased education and leadership from nurses to address the healthcare needs of our nation and world. Nurse coaches are strategically pos-i tioned and equipped to implement health-promoting and evidence-based strategies with clients and support behavioral and lifestyle changes to enhance growth, overall health, and well-being. With possibilities not yet imagined, employment opportunities for nurses who incorporate coaching into professional practice are developing across the entire spectrum of health, well-ness, and healing.
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