SCHOOL OF NURSING RN-BSN PROGRAM

COLLEGE  OF  HEALTH  AND URBAN AFFAIRS

COURSE DESCRIPTION

GENERAL INFO REQUIREMENTS

SCHEDULE DUE DATES

RN-BSN MAIN PAGE

Transition to Professional Nursing
HOLISTIC NURSING: ENHANCING HEALING

To e-mail the instructor  phillips@fiu.edu

CLASS HANDOUT  

DEFINITIONS
Concept of Holism

• All living organisms are viewed as interacting, unified wholes that are more than the sum of their parts.

• Any disturbance in one part is a disturbance of the whole system or being.

Holistic health belief

• The forces of nature, including human life, must be maintained in balance or harmony.

• When the natural balance or harmony is disturbed, illness results.

Holistic health care

• Considers are the components of health: health promotion, health maintenance, health education and illness prevention, and restorative-rehabilitative care.

• Advocates of holistic health care view all these components with equal importance.

Holistic nursing

• The goal of holistic nursing is the healing of the whole person.  

• Nursing services are provided that strengthen individuals and enable them to achieve the wholeness inherent within them.   

• Biopsychosocial and spiritual dimensions of each person are emphasized and nurses incorporate body-mind or biobehavioral-oriented therapies in all areas of nursing.   

• The focus is on the whole brain, a blending of the linear thought processes of the left brain and the intuitive though processes of the right brain.   

• Men and women have both masculine and feminine traits that together comprise the whole of the process of being.

Beliefs that underlie holistic practice are the following:

• The mind, body, and spirit are independent and share one consciousness.

• The human spirit is the core of the person.  

• A person’s attitude and beliefs toward life are major etiologic factors in health and disease.  

• The self is empowered with the ability to create or maintain health or disease.

• Human beings are energy fields.  Energy fields can become unbalanced in response to stress in any of the three domains of body, mind and spirit.   

• Each individual is an open system with the environment.  

• Health means feeling whole with regard to mind, body, and spirit.  

• Spiritual health is essential for physical, mental and emotional well-being.  

• Wellness is increasing openness and increasing harmony.  

• Changes in health occur through experiential learning—learning that occurs as a result of living trough an activity, situation , or event.  

• Health involves a transformational change that encompasses the whole person.  

• The client-practitioner relationship is a partnership, although the responsibilities of each partner may differ. 

BODYMIND HEALING

• Refers to a state of integration that includes body, mind and spirit. 

• The limbic-hypothalmic system, located within the brain and biochemically interconnected with all other parts of the body, is the link between body and mind.  Theoretical bases for bodymind healing include:

  • Information transduction.

  • Self-regulation theory.

  • State-dependent learning and memory.

  • Mind-modulation of the autoimmune, endocrine, immune, and neuropeptide systems.  

Information transduction

• Conversion or transformation of information or energy from one form to another.  

• Novel information has high informational value and evokes changes in the body and mind that prompt neural pathways and consciousness to connect.   

• EX: Relaxation techniques and imagery can have physiological effects.

Self-regulatory theory

• An individual’s ability to learn to process information to bring involuntary body responses under voluntary control. 

• Perceptions or imagery elicits mental and emotional responses that produce limbic, hypothalmic and pituitary biochemical responses.  The biochemical responses bring about physiological changes that are perceived and responded to, thus completing a cybernetic loop. 

State-dependent learning and memory

• Memories, whether positive or negative, are state- dependent because they are limited to the state in which they are acquired.   

• Bodymind methods function by gaining access to and reframing (substituting for another) the state-dependent learning and memory that encode problems and symptoms. 

Mind modulation  

• Refers to the process by which the brain convert neural messages (thoughts, feelings, attitudes, emotions) into neurohormonal messenger molecules and communicates them to all body systems that evoke states of health or illness.   

• Activity of any one of these systems can modulate the activity of the other systems. 

SELF-HEALING METHODS FOR NURSES

• Clarify own values and beliefs.

• Set realistic goals.

• Challenge the belief that others always come first.

• Maintain and enhance physical health.

• Develop a support network

• Learn to manage stress.

• Acknowledge the mind-body connection.  

• Monitor stress warning signals and evoke relaxation responses. Develop the skill of personal presence (physically and psychologically “being with” a client or other person). 
  

EXAMPLES OF HEALING THERAPIES
Mind-body therapies

• Progressive relaxation

• Biofeedback

• Guided Imagery

• Yoga

• Meditation

• Prayer

• Music Therapy

• Humor

• Hypnosis

• Aromatherapy

• Exercise

Touch therapies  

• Therapeutic massage

• Foot reflexology

• Acupressure

• Therapeutic touch

• Intercessory prayer

• Reiki

• Shiatsu

Alternative medical therapies

• Acupuncture

• Chiropractic

• Herbal medicine

• Naturopathy

• Homeopathy

• Traditional Chinese Medicine