I think that Karen hasn’t opened her mind to what nursing theories can do and have done for us as nurses. There are so many that have brought us to be the nurses that we are today. I honestly didn’t think they were that important, until taking the theories course a few months ago. I had taken multiple theory classes before this. I just never had thought deep enough about their importance.
I like to describe Katharine Kolcaba’s comfort theory when discussing nursing theories. I especially like this theory because it describes holistic care to patients. The patient can be an individual, a family, a community, or institutions who are in need of healthcare (Lima, Guedes, Silva, Freitas, & Fialho, 2017). This will be especially true for CNS, as we will be treating not only a certain patient. Education always involves more than that patient. Family is generally involved. Community prevention is also extremely important such as childhood obesity or mental health education. The numbers of those suffering from these two particular diagnosis are on the rise, and education to the community may be helpful in the prevention of them.
Kolcaba also describes the different types of comfort that can be utilized. The human needs are addressed as relief, ease, and transcendence (Merkel, 2007). Most patients that present will have some form of pain. One way of providing comfort is to decrease the amount of pain that the patient is experiencing. Pain can be acute or chronic, in which cases the pain may not be completely relieved, but if the patient can get back to doing their everyday life activities, then they have been treated appropriately. Different types of pain relief could be non medicinal, such as a warm blanket or a hand to hold. Sometimes these patients need something simple like that, but it means more to them than we think. As a CNS, providing comfort to patients is the key to a successful diagnosis.
Lima, J., Guedes, M., Silva, L., Freitas, M., Fialho, A. (2017). Usefulness of the comfort theory in the clinical nursing care of new mothers: critical analysis. Scientific Electronic Library Online, 37(4). doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1983-1447.2016.04.65022 (Links to an external site.)
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