Holisitic nursing: taking your practice to the next level.

The goal of holistic nursing is to enhance healing of the whole person from birth to death. The new American Holistic Nursing Association's (AHNAs) Standards of Holistic Nursing Practice defines the ways to accomplish this goal, describing the scope of holistic nursing practice and the level of care expected from a holistic nurse. Nurses can reduce the devastating effects of crisis and illness in individuals by using the AHNA standards of practice. As nurses integrate interdiciplinarity into their work and think at the intersections, the human story enfolds in a new way, and health moves into the domain of healing.

Florence Nightingale. A 19th-century mystic.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) received a clear and profoundly moving Call to serve God at the age of 16. Through a lifetime of hard work and discipline, she became a practicing mystic in the Western tradition, thereby becoming an instrument of God's love, which was the primary source of her great energy and the fabled "Nightingale power." To understand the life and work of this legendary healer, who forever changed human consciousness, the role of women, and nursing and public health systems in the middle of the 19th century, it is necessary to understand her motivation and inspiration. The purpose of this article is to discuss her life and work in the context of her mystical practice and to show the parallels between her life and the lives of three recognized women mystics.

Florence Nightingale. Her Crimean fever and chronic illness.

Florence Nightingale's Crimean fever and chronic illness have intrigued historians for more than a century and a half. The purpose of this article is threefold: (a) to discuss the facts that point to the cause of Nightingale's Crimean fever as brucellosis, (b) to show that her debilitating illness for 32 years (1855-1887) was compatible with the specific form of chronic brucellosis, and (c) to present new evidence that she was still having severe symptoms in December 1887, when it was previously felt that she had no severe symptoms after 1870.

Florence Nightingale. Her personality type.

The purpose of this article is to cast new and refreshing light on Florence Nightingale's life and work by examining her personality type. Using the theory-based Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the author examines Nightingale's personality type and reveals that she was an introverted-intuitive-thinking-judging (INTJ) type. The merit of using the MBTI is that it allows us to more clearly understand three major areas of Nightingale's life that have been partially unacknowledged or misunderstood: her spiritual development as a practicing mystic, her management of her chronic illness to maintain her prodigious work output, and her chosen strategies to transform her visionary ideas into new health care and social realities.

Inventory of professional activities and knowledge of a holistic nurse (IPAKHN).

In the development and administration of a certification examination in holistic nursing, an important issue is to ensure adequate content validity. Thus, the American Holistic Nurses' Association (AHNA) and the American Holistic Nurses' Certification Corporation (AHNCC), with the assistance of the National League for Nursing, conducted a practice analysis study to generate empirical data on the professional activities and knowledge required to practice holistic nursing on a day-to-day basis.

Complementary and alternative therapies for our aging society.

Gerontological nurses are dynamic individuals who recognize the necessary changes needed to reform a biotechnology-driven health care system to become a relationship-centered, care-driven healing system with elders. They must continue to take action to enhance caring and healing at personal levels and in various professional levels of clinical practice and health care reform. As gerontological nurses pursue personal, clinical, educational, and research approaches to holistic nursing and caring-healing modalities, they increase their knowledge and skills of holism and the complex body-mind-spirit interconnections, and provide relationship-centered care (Tresolini, 1994). Gerontological nurses then truly blend the art and science of caring with elders, and lead to a deeper understanding of healing as a lifelong journey into wholeness (Achterberg, Dossey & Kolkmeier, 1994).

Implications for bio-psycho-social-spiritual concerns in cardiovascular nursing.

One of the most challenging areas of scientific investigation is to determine the connections of the human spirit, emotions, love, attitudes, meaning, and purpose with physiologic and pathophysiologic alterations. Fundamental changes must occur in the current health care system and in research models so that cardiovascular patients, their families, and health care providers are presented with new strategies for prevention, stabilization, or reversal of the devastating effects of cardiovascular disease. The current biologic, unidimensional, reductionistic, technologic approach to the treatment of heart disease must be expanded to include the psycho-social-spiritual dimension. This article explores the mind-body dilemma, the theory and research basis for the psychophysiology of bodymind healing, and implications for practice and research.