Page 256 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

Hu ma n ExPE ri En cEs: HE a l t H , HE a l in g , a n d C ar i t a s N ur s iN g g
HE altH , HEaling, Hu ma nit y, an d H E a rt -cE nt E rEd Kn o w i n
illusive, if not philosophical, concept and thus has to be individually
defined. It is a subjective, inner-life world experience and phenomenon
that cannot necessarily be defined by external criteria alone.
Neither health nor illness/disease is an absolute state; rather, they
constitute a process of living, growing, evolving, being, experiencing,
and learning along life’s journey.
Nursing models and theories, from Nightingale onward, have
made explicit that health is not simply the absence of disease; they
have incorporated many life force dimensions, patterns, and processes
related to individual, community, and cultural worldviews. However,
the dominant mind-set continues to place both emphasis and dollars
on disease rather than on health. Modern, contemporary, sophisti-
cated medical systems still concentrate on sick care rather than well
care, prevention, and the quality of living, dying, being, becoming,
and so on. Ironically, to compound the issue, most of the health-illness
problems that occur most frequently and affect the largest number of
people are linked not to specific diseases but rather to psychosocial,
lifestyle, social, and environmental conditions and life circumstances.
The confusion of health and healing with medical disease and
treatment-cure has generated even more dilemmas, in that medi-
calized views of humans and the human condition have gradually
emerged whereby almost any human experience or condition of liv-
ing has a medical treatment and a diagnosis affixed to it. The result:
a medicalized-clinical approach to life through the increased use of
drugs, pharmaceutical-technical interventions, and medical specializa-
tion, now almost mandated to deal with life itself.
On the other hand, there is a spiritual emergence and a trend
toward a spiritualization of health and illness beyond the limited med-
icalized views of health, disease, and illness. In this emerging frame-
work, new space is opening for an evolving consciousness for nursing
and patients/health care systems alike. There are metaphorical views
of disease as an invitation to understand, to gain new meaning for
one’s life pattern, to see health and illness as evolving consciousness
and opportunities for healing—to feel/be more whole, to be-in-right-
relation, to experience more unity of mind-body-spirit regardless of
external conditions, circumstances, physical limitations, and so on.

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