The human condition itself evokes the call for healing practices. The easiest way to understand healing is to look at oneself, to recall a personal experience that evoked a desire to heal. We all know the sense of frustration of impaired or partial healing, the vulnerability that accompanies a desire to find help in the healing and the pain of failing to find that help. Nurses set out to provide that help. The better their information, the more competently and compassionately they can bring us all toward healing experiences.
Nursing is a relational discipline.
We know that how we relate to patients makes a difference, and we know it can enhance healing. We need the information to better understand how to optimize our relationships, how to maximize healing. We need the research to guide us to better, more humane and humanistic practices. The deep dissatisfaction that many persons experience with current health care practices can be easily traced to a neglectful or limited understanding of healing. Until we better understand the complex multiple dimensions of healing, we will continue to give our patients only a fraction of the care we said we would deliver.