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.
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.
Today's global health problems may seem insurmountable. Antibiotic-resistant microbes are increasing, and more economic, environmental, and social factors are affecting health. Health care costs keep rising. Hot politics and the chronic global nursing shortages all threaten the future of health care delivery. Also, diseases in many war-torn regions clearly place all humanity's health at risk. How can nurses possibly address these larger "global" challenges? To consider this question--and what nurses might do to contribute solutions--this article looks at the wider horizon of health care problems and how Florence Nightingale faced similar bigger health issues in her time. The health problems of today require renewed vision and the participation of committed citizens who take an active role in the promotion of human health-both locally and globally. By learning more about Nightingale's legacy, nurses actually attain a significant breadth and depth of knowledge and skill to share in these endeavors. Based on a review of Nightingale's responses and insights, seven recommendations are shared for consideration. While continuing the practices we have established, nurses can also create new, innovative, and relevant practice arenas, becoming--like she did in her time--global change agents for the sake of human health. From her broader viewpoint, Nightingale passed her global vision to us in order to extend our own horizons of possibility: remembering who we are, considering what we can do, who we care for, and why.
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), the famous “lady with the lamp,” is indeed the world's most well-known nurse. In our times, now for nearly six decades, the same environmental and social issues that were of concern to Nightingale are understood as key factors in achieving global development and global health. In Nightingale's footsteps, Nurse Coach leaders and all nurses are 21st century Nightingales who are coaching, informing, and educating for healthy people to be living on a healthy planet.
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