A Wholistic Model of Cancer Care for Nursing Practice

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Authors

Kinseth, Lynne

Issue Date

1993-06

Type

Thesis

Language

en_US

Keywords

Nursing , Cancer patients , Holistic medicine

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Abstract

Nursing today is affected by challenges to the beliefs and values underlying the delivery of health care services. Though nursing theory development, nursing has embraced a new paradigm in which the scientific medical model is being replaced by a model based on the concept of wholism. Key ideas representing a wholistic paradigm of health appear with increasing frequency in the nursing literature, demonstrating the diffusion of a new and different perspective of the practice of nursing. The purpose of this study was to develop a wholistic model of cancer care for nursing practice. The theoretical foundation for the model was derived largely from the nursing theory proposed by Margaret Newman, crisis theory and cancer nursing theory. Case studies from oncology nursing practice also were used in the development of the model. The wholistic model of cancer care for nursing practice developed embraces the new emerging nursing paradigm that redefines health to include a broader definition that allows the person with cancer to enter the health care system in a new way, as an equal partner, and to convert the cancer experience into a positive growth process. The wholistic model incorporates nursing's metaparadigm concepts of nursing, person, environment and health as well as the additional concepts of hope, wholism, movement, transformation and disorder. The focus is on the whole person that includes the cancer and views the patterns of interaction of the person and environment as the path to health. A health within illness perspective has implications for advanced clinical nursing practice. This model adds to the advancement of nursing theory development and nursing philosophy by considering illness as an opportunity for awareness and growth. It also shifts the focus of health care from fighting the enemy of illness to learning about oneself through the illness experience. The model also has implications for nursing practice, education and administration.

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90 leaves

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Drake University

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