Holistic nursing practice
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Holistic nursing practice · Jul 2011
The hidden challenges in role transitions and how leadership coaching can help new leaders find solid ground.
Leadership coaching is becoming an increasingly important intervention that helps individual nurse executives and managers develop and use the best of their strengths, gifts, and talents. As the need for leadership in nursing becomes urgent and brave souls move into the positions of greater authority and potential impact, they will face challenges as they move up in rank. This article identifies the hidden and often-overlooked challenges that are faced by new leaders as they transition into roles of increased responsibility, and it demonstrates how leadership coaching can help new leaders make successful transitions. ⋯ The less obvious stressors include issues of self-esteem, assertiveness, self-consciousness, self-criticism, perfectionism, new boundaries, changing identities, and finding one's own leadership style. These important issues are often kept out of conscious awareness and overlooked at great cost to the individual leader and her institution. Leadership coaching can provide support and practical strategies for managing and overcoming these hidden challenges.
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Holistic nursing practice · Jan 2011
Referrals to health care chaplaincy by head nurses: situations and influencing factors.
To determine in which situations head nurses refer patients to health care chaplains and to detect significant influential factors, 192 head nurses from 117 health care institutions in the German part of Switzerland were surveyed with regard to situations in which they refer to a chaplain. On average, head nurses refer "often" to a chaplain in their daily work in situations where patients are dying or need religious-spiritual service or support, but they refer only "rarely" to a chaplain in situations where patients or their families express negative feelings or where other psychosocial needs are present. ⋯ For quality improvement of chaplains' work, health care chaplains have to integrate themselves into the care team. On the contrary, standardized referral processes between chaplains and nurses as well as physicians have to be elaborated to reduce subjective factors (eg, the religiosity of the nurse) from the process of referring.
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Holistic nursing practice · Jul 2010
ReviewThe concept of health literacy within the older adult population.
Health literacy is a relatively new concept that has been evolving at a rapid pace over the past decade. As recently as 2004, nursing researchers were contributing only a small portion of the existing body of knowledge as it related to the concept of health literacy. But in the last 4 to 5 years, this trend has changed. ⋯ The research to date has shown a direct correlation between low health literacy and poor health. Older adults have been identified as a vulnerable population with an estimated two-thirds of US adults aged 60 and older having inadequate or marginal literacy skills. A concept analysis of health literacy in the older adult population is warranted at this time to further clarify the concept and provide standard terminology and definitions for future holistic nursing practice and research, leading to better identification of health-literacy deficits and intervention within vulnerable populations.
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Knowing person as caring is integral to holistic nursing practices. Before a nurse can know other as caring, there must be an intentional focus on knowing self as caring. The purpose of this article is to describe practicing nurses' living of Knowing, Patience, and Courage. This study is part of a larger ongoing study focused on grounding an entire organization in caring values.
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Although the use of spiritual and alternative healthcare practices is increasing, knowledge of these practices among the Amish is limited. This study explored the spiritual and healthcare practices of 134 Amish. Information about the diversity and prevalence of these practices among the Amish may be useful to nurses in practice.