A recognized international leader in the holistic nursing field, Barbara Dossey, R.N., Ph.D., defined holistic nursing as a practice that "embraces all nursing practices that strive to heal the whole person," in her presentation, "The Healing Environment: What Do We Mean?" Her current work focuses on holistic nursing, compassionate care for the dying, and virtual education.

Symposium presenter Barbara Dossey talks with UDM Nursing Assistant Professor Judy Mouch, RSM, during a conference break.

A renowned Florence Nightingale scholar, Dossey emphasized Nightingale's vision of nursing as a spiritual practice. According to Dossey, Nightingale was well ahead of her time as an environmental activist, statistician, and humanitarian. "The areas that Nightingale pursued are now the areas we need to examine more than ever in the field of health care," she asserted.

Pointing to increasingly polarized factions in health care, Dossey stressed the need for workers to listen to each other and support nurses in their day-to-day challenges. Healing, which is a focal point of her lecture, is defined as "a process of bringing the physical and emotional parts of oneself together at deep levels of inner knowing, leading to balance, with each part integrated with equal importance and value."

In her historical assessment of medical care, Dossey divided medicine into three eras.  Era I Medicine, she said, is medicine with an emphasis on the material body and is focused on local states of consciousness, while Era II Medicine is body-mind medicine, involving relaxation, imagery, and music therapy.

Finally, Era III Medicine is non-local medicine. It focuses on non-local states of consciousness and emphasizes the power of consciousness. According to Era III Medicine, the mind does not operate only within the individual body. Rather, minds are omnipresent, infinite, universal, and spread throughout space and time.

"Since holistic nursing is only recently recognized as a medical specialty, we are still new to the concept of caring for the mind as well as the body," she said. In addition, Dossey pointed to the complexity of contemporary health care and emphasizes the need to combine healing spirituality within the context of the 21st century health care environment.  "Today, we need to reinvent touch in nursing," she said.

See also the articles on the presentation by Larry Dossey and the Edward R. Heil Symposium.