Peters, D.

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     University of Westminster Eprints http://eprints.wmin.ac.uk   Editorial: squaring the circle: nursing and the future of holism.  David Peters School of Integrated Health    This is an electronic version of an article published in Journal of Holistic Healthcare, 2 (2). pp. 2, May 2005. Journal of Holistic Healthcare is available online at:  http://www.bhma.org/     The Eprints service at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience.  Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research.  Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden.        Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of the University of Westminster Eprints (http://eprints.wmin.ac.uk).   In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail wattsn@wmin.ac.uk.  © Journal of holistic healthcare  Volume 2 Issue 2 May 20052Squaring the circle: nursing andthe future of holismDoctor-nurse stereotypes are not what they were,thank goodness: male doctor – old school tie, wagingwar against disease; female nurse, ministering angel.Yet there’s an inevitable tension between theirroles, and the archetypal male-female split lives on,since every healthcare discipline has its more orless divided loyalties to cure or care. Between doctors and nurses the polarity seems extreme –doctors can move on to the next patient or the nextemergency; nurses can’t. Is this why the problem of‘burn-out’ was first described among nurses? Nevertheless, as Denise Rankin-Box reminds us,some practitioners – be they nurse or doctor – havea certain healing presence, which she associates witha capacity for engaging with people unconditionally,however distressed they are. Why then, since feelingscome with the healthcare territory, have medical and nursing training ignored them and left us so ill-prepared for the powerful emotions our worksometimes stir up? This author compares holisticteamwork to a symphony. Highlighting the need forinter-disciplinary harmony, she implies that until weshare a healing paradigm where treatment processesare more caring, and care is valued as somethingtherapeutic, discord is likely to prevail. Anne Cawthorn however rolls out a workingmodel for collaboration: nursing-as-therapy attunedto the high-tech, high distress world of a regionalNHS oncology unit. Here, nursing as therapy createstherapeutic space where patients can feel safeenough to deal with deep human predicaments;for who else but nurses, when it comes to theholistic symphony, will harmonise the darker tonesof suffering in the NHS? Denise Tiran argues thatmidwives too must make clearings in the jungle ofobstetric imperatives, for women to experiencenormal pregnancy, birth and early motherhood.And, though a diagnosis and treatment programme (in obstetrics as elsewhere) can provide doctors with emotional distancing and control, they too need to hear patients’ stories,especially in long-term conditions; a point powerfully made in William House’s article aboutchronic pain. In which case it would be fruitful, asour authors suggest, for doctors to learn from goodnursing practice: reflectiveness, mindfulness andcompassion and the benefits of professional supervision. For there is a strong case that caringand communication improve outcomes; even thatthey improve practitioners’ own well-being. Theseare topics JHH will take up in a new section over-viewing the evidence base for holistic interventions,a regular feature which begins in this issue with the first of James Hawkins’ series on non-pharmaceutical options for psychological illness.Whenever doctors and nurses discuss holisticpractice, the cure-care polarity fuels the debate.Naturally, the same differences run through ournursing articles too: that caring matters, that not all problems can or should be medicalised; thatdoctors should listen more. These truths have even greater significance now medicine is sogripped by the New Reductionism,which is whyholistic healthcare must square this circle, movingus beyond the cure or care polarity into a worldwhere caring medicine works alongside therapeuticnursing. Would this hold back the flood of nursesleaving the profession; re-enthuse would-berecruits? Would it restore morale to a medical profession obsessed with outcomes? It might, butcaring doesn’t happen by magic. Yes, it has to benurtured individually, but also by organisations andby health policy that really (not just rhetorically)values service-users’ needs and experience, andcherishes the work-force that can provide practicalholistic healthcare.EditorialDavid PetersEditor-in-chief

Editorial: squaring the circle: nursing and the future of holism

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Editorial: squaring the circle: nursing and the future of holism

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