Healing Ourselves, Healing Others

Mothering the Mother: An Educational Program for Nurse-Provided Continuous Labor Support

Continuous labor support (CLS) is associated with improved outcomes including decreased cesarean birth, increased 5-minute APGAR scores, decreased postpartum depression, and decreased nurse turnover rates. Despite this, CLS is not consistently practiced perhaps due to lack of education regarding the benefits of CLS and nurse staffing levels on birthing units. This article will discuss CLS benefits and implementation of an educational program designed to enhance nursing practice with regard to CLS and an educational program designed to provide five skills to perinatal nurses in order to enhance clinical practice. Pretest and posttests were administered and there was a significant knowledge increase related to nurse-provided CLS (p = .001) after attending the program.

Examination of the Perceptions of Registered Nurses Regarding the Use of Healing Touch in the Acute Care Setting

Given the current transformation of traditional health care to provide more integrative and complementary modalities, health systems are implementing new programs and services to meet consumer and provider needs. One such integrative modality, Healing Touch, with a foundation in holistic nursing, is a gentle therapy that uses touch to promote health and well-being by balancing the human energy system. This article describes the perceptions of registered nurses regarding the implementation of a Healing Touch training program at a multihospital health system. Five themes were identified: benefit to the patient, benefit to the nurse, holism beyond task orientation, integrating Healing Touch into acute care, and barriers and challenges. Nurses recognize the importance of creating caring-healing relationships and a holistic approach to care. Training in Healing Touch provides one avenue for nurses and health care providers to provide compassionate care.

Holistic nurses' stories of healing of another

The purpose of this study was to uncover the essence and meaning of healing through narrative accounts of holistic nurses, using a qualitative, descriptive design integrating narrative and story inquiry. Twenty-five stories were collected. Seven stories revealed personal healing and have been published in a prior article. Eighteen stories, the focus of this analysis, revealed healing of another. A hybrid method blending narrative and story guided the overall process for the study. Nine themes emerged describing healing of another within three story segments: The Call to Healing, The Experience of Healing, and Insights. The theme within The Call to the Healing Encounter was Drawn by Compassion to the Vulnerability and/or Suffering of Another. Five themes describe the Experience of Healing: Connection: Cocreating Relationships; Taking Risks and Dealing With Skeptical Colleagues; Use of Modalities and Actions as Tools in Developing Self as an Instrument of Healing; Profound, Ineffable Events; and Using Metaphor and Rituals to Describe Healing. Three themes describe Insights: Mutual Transformation, Change, and Reciprocity; Gratitude for the Healing Encounter; and Leaving a Legacy. The metastory, a reconstructed story created by the researchers, was the final phase of research synthesizing and demonstrating themes of healing of another. Results were compared to existing healing literature.

A Midrange Theory of Empowered Holistic Nursing Education: A Pedagogy for a Student-Centered Classroom

The purpose of this article is to propose Empowered Holistic Nursing Education (EHNE) as a midrange theory—developed through induction, explication, deduction, and retroduction—to help nurse educators teach holistically and create a student-centered classroom, to establish a theoretical basis for a nursing pedagogy reflecting nursing’s foundational principles, and to guide future research. The model’s 5 core concepts, how to use the model as a pedagogy for practice, and its application to research will be presented. Holistic nursing will be defined, and traditional holistic nursing, holistic pedagogy, and emancipatory pedagogy will each be described.

The effect of spiritual retreat on nurses' spirituality: a randomized controlled study

This study tested whether two 1-day retreats focused on spiritual self-care would positively change nurse participants' spirituality. A total of 199 critical care nurses were accepted into this study; 87 were randomized to receive the retreat intervention. All 199 nurses were tested preretreat, 1 month and 6 months postretreat. Retreat participants demonstrated increased spirituality.

A practical approach to labor support

In the United States, intrapartum nurses are present at 99% of births. These nurses have a unique opportunity to positively affect a laboring woman's comfort and labor progress through the use of labor support behaviors. These nonpharmacologic nursing strategies fall into four categories: physical, emotional, instructional/informational, and advocacy. Implementation of these strategies requires special knowledge and a commitment to the enhanced physical and emotional comfort of laboring women.

Nurses' professional concerns: letters to the editor for 1900-2005

The purpose of this qualitative study was to broaden the context for understanding nurses' professional concerns as voiced through letters to the editor of the American Journal of Nursing from 1900 to 2005. Two issues from each year were randomly selected. Line-by-line analysis was used to code, categorize, and analyze the data. The following five themes emerged: self-care versus self-sacrifice; nursing's emphasis on holistic care; educational and professional preparation; nurse-physician relationships; and the image of the nurse. The recurrent nature of these themes has important implications for nursing education, clinical practice, leadership, and research.

Taking the Eagleʼs View

Watson's conceptual model of a caring-healing transpersonal understanding of nursing was used to underpin a hermeneutic phenomenological study of the extraordinary and transformational experiences of nurse healers. The 5 essential themes uncovered from the analysis of interviews with 11 nurse healers--Belonging & Connecting, Opening to Spirit, Summoning, Wounding & Healing Journey, and Living as a Healer--are set out, along with the overarching theme "Walking Two Worlds." Foundational understandings of Watson's model as they relate to the findings, and theoretical aspects, are discussed, and potential contributions of this study to the ongoing evolution of Watson's conceptual model are articulated.

Promoting quality sleep in older people: the nursing care role

Sleep is a basic activity of living. Its restorative properties in healthcare settings--both hospital and community--should be considered by healthcare workers. Its significance in gerontological nursing should not be underestimated. As older people are prone to multiple pathology, disease processes may mask their need for effective sleep and rest. "Sleep architecture" is a term that applies to the mechanics of sleep or its stages and clinicians may fail to identify when this is disrupted. "Sleep hygiene" refers to measures or interventions used to promote sleep and a person-centred approach is necessary, with support from specialist agencies to achieve effective sleep hygiene. The need for long periods of sleep may diminish owing to ageing. However, the quality of the sleep experiences, i.e. feeling rested and refreshed, should be the same. Several factors have been identified in the causation of insomnia. In healthcare settings, environmental factors such as noise and light pollution are the commonest features. Other issues that may be present in both healthcare and community settings are related to varied perspectives, such as physiological, psychological and spiritual-religious. Providing a climate conducive to health sleep in all settings becomes a requisite in the planning of care.

Healing Ourselves, Healing Others

A review of the literature (Part 1 in this series) revealed the power and pitfalls of being female and being a healer. A qualitative study of medical-surgical nurses (Part 2) gave a glimpse of the satisfaction, frustration, and confusion nurses experience as healers. In particular, participants did not engage in regular self-care behaviors and did not articulate ways to create healing environments that would support nurses as well as patients. In this third and final article, implications and recommendations beyond the study will be shared. Education, clinical practice, leadership, and research are aspects of professional nursing that may benefit from these interpretations.