Page 255 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

P a r t V

Health, Healing, Humanity, and
Heart-Centered Knowing for Caritas Nursing

Over a century ago, Florence Nightingale established nursing’s focus
within a context of health and wholeness that contained yet tran-
scended body-physical, limited approaches to health and healing; thus,
she embraced the human spirit and nonphysical phenomena that reside
within as well as without. She advocated that nursing focus on health
and human experiences that affect all humanity across time and space,
all ages, nationalities, races, and varieties of human circumstances that
we share. Such a focus transcends disease and illness while still accom-
modating those realities of nursing.
Within the context of Caritas Nursing, it can be made more explicit
that health and healing notions related to caring are distinctly differ-
ent from exclusive medical, clinical, body-physical approaches. In this
model, health cannot be and is not defined from the standpoint of
clinical disease or illness. In this model, health is first and foremost an