What's in a Definition? Holistic Nursing, Integrative Health Care, and Integrative Nursing: Report of an Integrated Literature Review.

Background: Nurses and others have used various terms to describe our caring/healing approach to practice. Because terms used can influence our image of ourselves and the image others have of us, we sought to clarify their meanings. Questions: How are the terms holistic nursing, integrative health care, and integrative nursing defined or described? Do we identify with these definitions/descriptions? Are the various terms the same or are they distinct? Method: We conducted an integrated review of peer-reviewed literature following the process described by Whittemore and Knafl. Using standard search methods, we reviewed full texts of 94 published papers and extracted data from 58 articles. Findings: Holistic describes "whole person care" often acknowledging body-mind-spirit. Holistic nursing defines a disciplinary practice specialty. The term integrative refers to practice that includes two or more disciplines or distinct approaches to care. Both terms, integrative and holistic, are associated with alternative/complementary modalities and have similar philosophical and/or theoretical underpinnings. Conclusions: There is considerable overlap between holistic nursing and integrative nursing. The relationship of integrative nursing to integrative health care is unclear based solely on definitions. Consideration of terms used provides opportunities for reflection, collaboration, and growth.

Assessment of the GALEN methodology on holistic classifications for professions allied to medicine.

In the field of health care terminology it has proven to be difficult, but not impossible, to build a formal Reference Model (knowledge-model) for medical terminology. The intuition is that it is even more difficult to build such a reference model for the so called â holistic' classification schemes as used by Nursing and Allied Health Care Professionals. There is a growing perceived need for formal reference models for specific professional groups. These reference models are used in many different ways, such as for building, maintaining and manipulating classification schemes. This paper focuses on the usability of the GALEN methodology for the formalisation of the Dutch Classification of Pain (NCP) as an example of such a â holistic classification'. The first results of this exploration show that the GALEN methodology is very useful for analysing and understanding a' holistic classification'. A high number of necessary concepts from the NCP already exist within the OpenGalen Common Reference Model-2 (OCRM2). A substantial number of concepts from the NCP do not yet exist in the OCRM2 or are underspecified. Additional modelling of the OCRM2 has to be performed, to enrich the expressivity of the model.

Complementary therapies and their role in nursing care.

This article aims to develop the nurse's knowledge of the range of complementary therapies available and how they can benefit patients. It relates to UKCC Professional Development categories Care enhancement and Patient, family, client and colleague support.

Research to support holistic nursing taxonomies.

A philosophy of holism and the development of nursing taxonomies may appear to have goals that are inconsistent. Taxonomies are typically hierarchic in structure, and their content often consists of atomic level elements rather than holistic concepts. The article explores the development of taxonomies and how they can be enriched by a holistic perspective.