Holistic nursing care is still considered by many as a mystery, but it is so easy to understand. Although it differs from the standard nursing care we know, it certainly has many benefits. Traditional nursing care aims to heal individuals physically, emotionally, and mentally; holistic nursing targets improving these practices.
In this post, we will understand what is holistic nursing and the several benefits it has. Read through to learn more.
What Is Holistic Nursing Care?
In simple terms, holistic nursing aims at healing individuals by uniting body, mind, emotion, spirit, and environment. The nurses apply their therapeutic skills and knowledge to attend to patients. This unity creates a care system where health care professionals believe that patients’ mental status impacts their wellness.
Basics of Holistic Nursing Care
While it is through common medical practice that heals a patient, by uniting a patient’s health and the environment they are in, they can be healed wholly. Going by this belief, holistic nurses apply complementary or alternative modalities to provide care to their patients.
Therefore, holistic nurses include individual patients’ psychological and spiritual needs to provide care to them. Holistic care nurses believe that relating to a patient on a personal level increases the healing process. And for them to achieve this, they offer cultural, religious, and spiritual support too.
Importance of Holistic Nursing Care
Holistic nursing care is based on the following principles, which doubles up as its common importance.
- Show care; patients need to understand that they are cared for by their nurses, not only as patients but on a higher psychological level. Also, holistic nurses have a belief that their wards will provide a positive response towards healing when the environment is positively charged.
- Helps reduce patients’ anxiety: although conventional nursing looks at caring for patients’ physical wellbeing, holistic nursing practices aim at upgrading these practices. Holistic nurses work on understanding patients psychologically and offer relevant help that reduces their stress and anxiety. They bond socially, culturally, and even spiritually to give hope to them.
- Preserve patients’ dignity: some patients are so deep in their illnesses that they depend on their nurses for different activities they used to do by themselves. Most of the time, this dependency makes them lose their dignity, especially if they are adults who commanded some respect in the past. In such cases, holistic nurses, through their therapeutic skills and advanced knowledge of handling such issues, offer compassion, love, and genuine care to help them revive their dignity.
- Applies non-pharmacological methods that support the healing process; Holistic nurses understand their patients and can apply various non-pharmacological methods to improve their patient’s healing and self-care. These methods may include relaxation techniques, imagery, storytelling, and meditation to enhance the bonding.
Conclusion
For people who have not been familiar with what is holistic nursing, hopefully, this post will help them understand it in detail. It is a form of nursing that aims at improving conventional nursing practices to an advanced level.
Holistic nursing has a lot of benefits and importance, including reducing patients’ anxiety, preserving their dignity, and showing advanced care that makes them feel loved while speeding their healing process.
