Abstract
Holistic caring consists of providing care to each aspect of a patient's life through the use of therapeutic caring and complementary or alternative healing modalities. Since nursing consists of caring for the whole person and not just the disease process, consideration of a patient's physical, emotional, social, economic, spiritual, and cultural needs is necessary in dealing with any chronic health problem such as chronic wounds. In this model case studies presentation, the purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of the holistic caring approach and the use of complementary and alternative medicine or therapeutic modalities in chronic wound management. The use or role of theory in practice will also be discussed to emphasize the holistic caring praxis model used in the holistic assessment and holistic plan of care for the cases presented. This article also presents a framework that will help wound care and holistic nurses move from simply the positivist-modernist philosophy to begin to embrace the postmodernist philosophy.
I had my wound so long, I thought about naming it
Mr Jim
Holistic caring consists of providing care to each aspect of a patient's life through the use of therapeutic caring and complementary or alternative healing modalities. 1-4 Since nursing consists of caring for the whole person and not just the disease process, consideration of a patient's physical, emotional, social, economic, spiritual, and cultural needs is necessary in dealing with any chronic health problem such as chronic wounds. This is critical as chronic health problems are multidimensional in nature. The American Nurses Association (ANA)5 and the American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA)6 define holistic nursing as nursing practice directed to healing the whole person. The goal of ANA and AHNA is to treat the whole person, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, which include the soul, using modalities that will promote healing and caring, which are the essence of the nursing profession. 7-8
Like many chronic illnesses, chronic wound management is influenced by multiple factors. 9-12 These factors include not merely physiological factors such as circulation and infection; the healing of a chronic wound can also be affected by economical factors such as cost of product, social factors such as transportation or access to health care, spiritual factors such as the hope and belief of the patients, psychoemotional factors such as the motivation and caring attitude of the patient, caregivers, and providers, and political factors such as the type of health care insurances or reimbursement and the politics among the various wound care turfs or providers. In this model case studies presentation, the purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of the holistic caring approach and the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) or therapeutics in chronic wound management.