Page 157 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

c h a p t e r t w e l v e

From Carative faCtor 8: Attending to a Supportive,
Protective, and/or Corrective Mental, Physical,
Societal, and Spiritual Environment
to Caritas ProCess 8: Creating a Healing Environment
at All Levels

Comfort
Comfort measures can be supportive, protective, and even corrective
of a person’s inner and outer environments. The environment of hos-
pitals, while dramatically improved over the past two decades, is still
too inflexible and bound by tradition, controls, schedules, and routines
to meet the individual needs of patients and family members.
Some of the comfort measures identified in my original text
still hold today as basic guidelines (Watson 1979). These and other
approaches continue to serve only as examples but are consistent with
Nightingale’s views that still need attention (Watson 1979:90).

• Remove noxious stimuli from the external environment (bright
lights, loud and sudden noises, inadequate heating, poor ventila-
tion, untidy surroundings, and so on).

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