Editorial: Holistic Nursing Practice

The American Holistic Nurses’ Association’s (AHNA; 1997) description of holistic nursing is a blend of two viewpoints. One states that “holism involves studying and understanding the interrelationships of the bio-psycho-social-spiritual dimensions of the person, recognizing that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” (AHNA, 1997, p. 345). The other description involves integration, rather than interrelationships: “Holism involves understanding the individual as an integrated whole interacting with and being acted on by both internal and external environments” (AHNA, 1997, p. 345). Any discussion of the practice of holistic nursing must take both descriptions into account. In many ways, the problem the AHNAfaces in describing holism is similar to that which confronts physicists. Both must deal with the dilemma of the fact that reality is complex and can be viewed from below or within a situation and from above or outside of that situation. The artistry is to do both at the same time. A simple example of the problem that physicists face would be two views of the ocean. An astronaut sees the planet as a watery mass and clearly sees how the oceans are connected but interspersed with large and small bodies of land that seem to separate an inseparable whole. This might be called a global view. But when you go to the beach on a hot summer day, you stand and watch a different, but equally true view of that same watery planet. As you watch the waves break on the shore, you can notice drops of water that separate from the whole of the ocean for just a short time. In that brief existence, a water droplet obeys different physical laws than it does when it is part of the whole. This can be considered an individual, or phenomenon, view (Herbert, 1985). Physics’