Standards of Holistic Nursing Practice as Guidelines for Quality Undergraduate Nursing Curricula

The accreditation criteria of the Commission for Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) direct faculty to select nationally developed standards for professional practice to guide curricula and to articulate curriculum outcomes. Recently, the CCNE proposed that all undergraduate programs should adopt the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials of Baccalaureate Education as one set of national standards for undergraduate and prelicensure programs. Standards of Holistic Nursing Practice, developed by the American Holistic Nurses’ Association, is an additional set of standards that assists in defining quality for undergraduate nursing education. Standards of Holistic Nursing shares major concepts with Essentials; however, it accentuates the concepts of nurse self-care, articulated nursing theory as a foundation for practice, managing the care environment to promote healing, and care of the environment as essential to professional practice. These standards do not change the care being provided by professional nurses adhering to nursing theory and current evidence, but they do raise awareness and change emphasis of practice to reflect a holistic perspective. Used together, Standards and Essentials provide complementary guidelines for curricula-preparing professional nurses to care for client and self

Family-Centered Care: A School Nursing Model to Support Children with Special Health Care Needs and Their Families

Children and youth with special health care needs encompass a diverse group, yet many of their families face similar challenges in coordinating care and seeking support for their children. The licensed school nurse, having been trained as a public health nurse, is uniquely positioned to provide family-centered care that improves health outcomes, addresses health inequities, and empowers families to access resources. Intentional collaboration between the licensed school nurse and families will optimize children’s health and ability to fully participate in school. School nurses have as part of their scope of practice the role of health teacher and health promoter (National School Nurses Association & American Nurses Association, 2011). By providing a more holistic, family-centered approach, the school nurse is able to see the child in the context of the family and better meet the needs of the child and the child’s family

Spiritual Care Competency of Critical Care Nurses: A Literature Review

While caring for their patients, nurses often encounter spiritual needs. In a study with 241 hospice, palliative care, and holistic nurses, “all respondents (100%) indicated they had encountered a patient with spiritual needs throughout their nursing clinical practice” (Lukovsky et al., 2021, p. 32). Despite the prevalence of spiritual needs, many nurses feel unable to confront spiritual issues among their patients. According to a survey conducted among 4054 nurses from the UK, “almost 93% of the nurses surveyed believed spiritual care should be addressed, yet only 5.3% felt always able to meet the spiritual need of patients on a regular basis” (Lukovsky et al., 2021, p. 35). Spiritual care, as discussed in this literature review, “is the recognition and support of the religion and/or spirituality dimensions of illness” (Lukovsky et al., 2021, p. 28). While it is important for all nurses to be competent in holistic care, it is especially vital for critical care nurses. Research shows “that patients in critical-care units indicate spiritual needs more frequently than do patients in other hospital units” (Ruth-Sahd et al., 2018, p. 18). According to the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, meeting patients’ spiritual needs is an essential part in promoting healing (Ruth-Sahd et al., 2018). Consequently, it is paramount that critical care nurses are equipped with the proper resources to address these concerns

Holistic Understanding

In 2007, the Association of American Retired People (AARP) published its Funeral and Burial Planners survey key findings that revealed 12 percent were interested in green burial and that practitioners should provide education on environmentally friendly options to this audience. Nurses are currently knowledgeable about Advance Care Directives (ACD) for cessation of care. To gain a better understanding of nurses\u27 attitudes toward green burial, a plan to create a holistic nurse-learning circle was developed to discuss the Funeral Rule, pre-burial planning for green funerals and flameless cremation, and the importance of collaborating with funeral directors. To facilitate this group, a Holistic Undertaking model was conceptualized integrating Jean Watson\u27s post-modern vision of Caritas/Communitas where unique partnerships occur within systems to promote eco-caring and sustainable practices. This learning group would have the opportunity to discuss advanced care planning which includes burial in a gestalt space. If successful, nurses will become engaged in the community by attending death cafes and community groups to learn about new ecofriendly burial practices with the result of intergenerational equality - the preservation of earth for future generations

An Online Educational Program Improves Pediatric Oncology Nurses’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Spiritual Care Competence

This study evaluated the potential impact of an online spiritual care educational program on pediatric nurses’ attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and their competence to provide spiritual care to children with cancer at the end of life. It was hypothesized that the intervention would increase nurses’ positive attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and increase nurses’ level of perceived spiritual care competence. A positive correlation was expected between change in nurses’ perceived attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and change in nurses’ perceived spiritual care competence. A prospective, longitudinal design was employed, and analyses included one-way repeated-measures analysis of variance, linear regression, and partial correlation. Statistically significant differences were found in nurses’ attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and nurses’ perceived spiritual care competence. There was a positive relationship between change scores in nurses’ attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and nurses’ spiritual care competence. Online spiritual care educational programs may exert a lasting impact on nurses’ attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and their competence to provide spiritual care to children with cancer at the end of life. Additional studies are required to evaluate the direct effects of educational interventions patient outcomes

Why are Spiritual Aspects of Care so hard to Address in Nursing Education?’ A Literature Review (1993-2015)

Difficulties persist in conceptualising spiritual needs and understanding their relationship to religious needs and relevance to wellbeing. This review was undertaken to clarify some of these issues. It set out to establish what is already known about how issues of spiritual assessment and care are addressed in undergraduate nursing education. Using a systematic approach, a literature review covering the period 1993-2015 was undertaken. Reviewed materials were collected from mainly online sources including with searches conducted using CINHAL, SUMMON and PubMed databases, after defining keywords and inclusion and exclusion criteria. The study found that Spirituality appears to be a broad but useful category which is concerned with how people experience meaning and purpose in their lives. However, it also established that here are relatively few studies focused on how spiritual care competencies could be developed in nursing students. There is also little work exploring nursing educators’ perspectives and experiences about how to develop spiritual competencies in their students. The study concludes that further research is necessary in order to bridge the gap between aspirations and practice

Toward a Definition of Nurse-Managed Centers

The purpose of this study was to gain consensus on a definition of Nurse-Managed Centers. To accomplish this task, Delphi survey methods were used with the participants of the Second Biennial Conference on Nurse-Managed Centers. Delphi methods entail obtaining autonomous consensus from experts through rounds of questionnaires and feedback of results. A questionnaire was developed that included 22 items obtained from the literature, past conferences, and the expertise of the authors. An additional 6 items were suggested by the conferees. Of the 168 conferees, 148 participated in the first round, 147 in the second, and 133 in the third. Fifty-three percent of the respondents were educators, 22% administrators, and 11% clinicians. More than 75% of the respondents were masters prepared. After the third round, the highest-ranked items indicated that NMCs should provide direct access for clients to professional nursing, be part of a strong referral network, base services on client participation, and provide holistic treatment. A definition was formulated and associations between ranked items and selected demographic characteristics were analyzed

Stress Relieving Lavender Aromatherapy for Inpatient Nurses

Lavender essential oil as a form of aromatherapy is proven to be an effective way to relieve occupational stress among nurses, providing them with a healthy self-care outlet. The purpose of this DNP project was to decrease the stress levels of inpatient nurses by implementing lavender essential oil aromatherapy as a self-care initiative. Willing inpatient Registered Nurses within a fast-paced inpatient telemetry unit were given a vial that contained three drops of Young Living lavender essential oil enclosed within at the beginning of their shifts. The nurses were asked to carry it with them during their eight-hour shifts for three weeks and directly inhale the aroma twice when they perceived stress. A Nursing Stress Scale (NSS) was administered before and after aromatherapy exposure for pre-post comparison to measure the effectiveness of the aromatherapy self-care intervention. Nine registered nurses out of forty (23%) from a telemetry inpatient unit participated in the project. The average Nursing Stress Scale score of the participants prior to the aromatherapy exposure was 83 and the average score after exposure decreased to 75. Eight out of nine nurses (89%) felt stress relief from utilizing aromatherapy within their nursing work shifts over the three-week period. The nurses who used their vials the least, 1-3 times a day, had a lower average post aromatherapy score of 69.5. Those who inhaled their aromatherapy more often during their shift, 3-6 or 6 plus times a day, had higher average post NSS scores of 80, 75 and 71. In conclusion, Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) essential oil is an effective self-care intervention that lowers stress levels among inpatient nurses

A Literature Review: Current Trends in Holistic Nursing

There is scarcity of documentation that seeks to define spirituality relating to holistic nursing; consequently, a literature review was formulated to define spirituality and guide nursing practice towards recognizing the importance of and implementation of spiritual care. By researching the current trends in peer-reviewed journals from the past three years and analyzing associated articles, this paper addresses the need for a comprehensive definition of spirituality. Key concepts such as belief, values, interconnectedness with self, others and God, energy, hope and transcendence will be analyzed, and the accumulated data will be complied into a framework that is easy for a nurse to understand and use. This thesis strives to validate the necessity of spiritual care through the mechanism of holistic nursing and equip nurses to assess and implement care for the ever-present spiritual needs of one’s patients