Holistic Nursing Task

Nurses and Holistic Nursing

Nurses play a huge role in the wellbeing of patients to ensure they feel better while and after undergoing treatment. Nurses aim to heal the whole-person as the main aim and not focusing only on the physical body, a process that is referred to as holistic nursing or complementary health nursing.

Addressing the Whole Person

Nursing as a field is based on the idea that a patient’s physical health cannot be treated well without addressing the entire person and tries to deal with spiritual, emotional, spiritual, mental and social needs too to ensure the whole person is well as discussed.

Enhancing Mental and Emotional Wellness

Nurses can aid in ensuring mental and emotional wellness of their patient providing better response to medication. Lane (2016) claims that holistic nursing compliment several modalities of treatment that work together with the conventional therapies and understand that people are different and one disease can be treated differently depending on one’s mental state among other factors.

Treating the Emotional Needs

According to Dattilo and Brewer (2016), individual patients, especially those who have cancer, need to be treated holistically by their nurses since not only does these diseases affect the anatomical functioning of the body but a person as a whole. Victim’s psychology, spirit, and the mind tend to be compromised with causing the patient to have a fear of the unknown, loss of faith and hope.

Importance of Holistic Treatment

Schank, Weis, and Matheus (2017) claim that nurses can play in the holistic treatment of their patients by ensuring that patients take part in their treatment process and even though specific ailments may not be cured patients must be made to understand, most sickness can be managed. Holistic treatment ensures peace and oneness when healing by valuing each person’s mental, physical, emotional factors and the whole person during diagnosis and assessment (Lane, 2018). Holistic nurses also treat the patient’s emotional needs using therapy and specific alternatives to medicinal practices like aromatherapy that focuses on the emotional state of the client by using aroma to heighten energy and relaxation (Lane, 2018).

Physical Healing and Holistic Treatment

Nurses can help in holistic treatment that aids in physical healing. According to Lane (2018), nurses can heal a person as a whole by using therapies like heat therapy that focuses on the reduction of pain by relaxing muscles using catalysts like warm water or heat pack that aid in the loosening of muscles that are tight hence relieving pain.

Supplements and Pain Reduction

Dattilo and Brewer (2016) claim that supplements can be a brilliant way to help in holistic reduction of physical pain since entire body treatment for depression helps to increase a patient’s chance for coping, and even long-term betterment. Relaxing the body and mind reduce chances of inflammation by heightening circulation and blocking pain receptors among patients.

The Role of Exercises

According to Schank et al. (2017), nurses should advise their clients to take part in exercises that can be as helpful as morphine since the brain releases endorphins that later block pain signals from the mind. Activities also help in improving circulation hence allowing more oxygen-nourished blood to cleanse and nourish the painful areas. Inflammation is one cause of pain amongst patients and causes physical damage to the victims. Nurses can advise those that may be at risk to eat foods that are anti-inflammatory like veggies and fruits or use remedies that are anti-inflammatory like Boswellia and MSM as natural ways of pain reduction (Schank et al., 2017).

The Importance of Bodywork

According to Dattilo and Brewer (2016), bodywork can be a huge step if the entire body has to be treated for physical pain by improving the range of motion and reduce pain. Patients can try rolling, massage and trigger point therapies, massages help in loosening tight muscles enhancing circulation in the process to the affected areas. Nurses can be of a lot of importance especially while performing chiropractic procedures that help in neck treatment, reduce muscle tension, headaches among patients can be stopped by hip adjustments according to research (Schank et al., 2017).

Spiritual Healing and Holistic Treatment

Nurses can help patients to heal spiritually, especially when dealing with spiritual patients to improve their health. Lane (2018) suggests that nurses should help their clients to understand that religious methods of healing do not replace conventional treatments but rather complement each other. Spiritual healing treats the cause of the problem that may affect the patient that is spiritual while the medical procedures help in the treatment of symptoms that are brought by mental issues.

The Importance of Spiritual Alignment

According Lane (2018), more than 80% of problems that affect us have spiritual dimensions attached to them; an example is when patients are affected by “ghost attacks” this can lead to heart attack. Nurses do not have a sense that enables them to see ghosts’ nurses may treat for the cause of heart attack and get limited to psychological and physical aspects and in the process managing the symptom without dealing with the underlying cause of the problem. Nurses can play a role in ensuring holistic treatment by providing that the spiritual dimension that surrounds a patient are aligned accordingly, for instance, the case of a heart ailment that have a religious cause surgical and medical procedures will only heal the resultant damage caused by spiritual causes (Lane, 2018).

Spiritual Remedies and Practices

According to Schank et al., (2017) holistic medication that is spiritual is divided into two, spiritual remedies and religious practices. Spiritual remedies method the person that is affected or another individual treats a problem that has a spiritual root-cause even though this only brings relief that is short lasting such as pranic healing. Spiritual practices involve a person undertaking medical cure depending on the six spiritual primary healing process, and such an individual will build the ability to protect oneself from harm, this method is 100% effective in treating problems when compared with spiritual remedies that are only 40% effective (Schank et al., 2017).

Conclusion

Nurses can play a significant role in healing their patients holistically. Several methods can be used to complement medication and replace the natural medicines to ensure patients feel better. Holistic treatments ensures patients are treated both physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

References

Dattilo, J., & Brewer, M. K. (2016). Assessing Clients’ Sexual Health as a Component of Holistic Nursing Practice: Senior Nursing Students Share Their Experiences. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 23(2), 208–219.

Lane, M. R. (2018). Arts in Health Care: A New Paradigm for Holistic Nursing Practice. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 24(1), 70–75.

Schank, M. J., Weis, D., & Matheus, R. (2017). Parish nursing: Ministry of healing: Parish nurses provide holistic nursing services to members of church congregations. Geriatric Nursing, 17(1), 11–13.