Using nursing theory to define health

Previously posted in the Integral Health Care Pod:

Health can be and is defined in various ways and in numerous contexts. Health is a process and not limited or necessarily related to the absence or the presence of disease. There is personal health, community health, the health of populations and environmental health, (just to name a few). For me health is not just limited to healing, it is also about prevention and the state of mind of the person.

 
Many nursing theorists have defined health within their nursing models. The model components are organized by the nursing metaparadigm concepts: person, environment, health and nursing. These 4 metapradigm are present in all nursing models. I realize that the definition of health is not limited to the nursing perspective alone. However,  I have not discovered many other definitions of health that are as comprehensive as nursing models. I believe that these selected models and their definitions of health will  help pave the way for integral health care in the future.

Margaret Neumans: Health as Expanding Consciousness:

The theory of health as expanding consciousness stems from Rogers’ theory of unitary human beings. Rogers’ assumptions regarding patterning of persons in interaction with the environment are basic to the view that consciousness is a manifestation of an evolving pattern of person-environment interaction. 

Consciousness is defined as the informational capacity of the system (in this case, the human being); that is, the ability of the system to interact with the environment (Bentov, 1978).  Consciousness includes not only the cognitive and affective awareness normally associated with consciousness, but also the interconnectedness of the entire living system, which includes physiochemical maintenance and growth processes as well as the immune system.  This pattern of information, which is the consciousness of the system, is part of a larger, undivided pattern of an expanding universe.

Rogers’ insistence that health and illness are simply manifestations of the rhythmic fluctuations of the life process is the foundation for viewing health and illness as a unitary process moving through variations in order-disorder.  From this standpoint, one can no longer think of health and illness in the dichotomous way characterized by medical science; that is, health as absence of disease or health as a continuum from wellness to illness.  Health and the evolving pattern of consciousness are the same. 

A person is identified by her or his pattern, which reflects the pattern of the person within the larger pattern of the environment.  The pattern is evolving through various permutations of order and disorder, including what in everyday language is called health and disease. Pattern recognition emerges from a process of uncovering meaning in a person’s life.  Meaning is inherent in pattern, and vice versa. 

Martha Rogers: Science of Unitary Beings

Rodgers often used the word health but declines to give a specific definition. She came to understand that illness and health are value words, broadly define by each culture” to denote behavior that is of high value and low value”. Rodgers conceptualized health and illness as expressions of the human life process. The life process is inseparable from the environmental field, challenging the prevailing understanding of health as only an illness manifestation of the physical body.

Energy fields are the “fundamental unit of the living and the non-living”. They consist of the human energy field and the environment energy field. The human field is “an irreducible, indivisible, pan dimensional energy field identified by pattern and manifesting characteristics that are specific to the whole and which cannot be predicted from knowledge of the parts”. The environmental field is integral with the human field. Each environmental field is specific to its given human field.

Open systems (openness) describe the open nature of the fields, which allow for an interchange of energy and matter between the fields, the preferred terminology being that there is a “continuous process” without the mention of energy or matter. Pattern is the “distinguishing characteristic of the energy field perceived as a single wave”, which gives identity to the field. Human behavior can be regarded as manifestations of changing pattern. The pattern is constantly changing and might be regarded as an indication of pain, illness or disease.

Madeline Leininger: Transcultural Nursing theory

 Refers to health as “a state of well being that is culturally define, valued, and practiced, and which reflects the ability of individuals (or groups) to perform their daily role activities in culturally expressed, beneficial, and patterned lifeways”.

Re: Using nursing theory to define health

Monica,
You actually remember all those nursing theories they forced us to learn?  Just kidding…..very excellent!
Tammy

Re: Using nursing theory to define health

Ha! No not really….but I am taking a graduate course in Nursing Theory, so i’ve got a neat book! Most of us think that Nursing Theory is actually quite boring..but it somehow might help strenghten our profession, if we decide to narrow it down a bit! But I am not sure about that yet. I will share what I learn with the zaadz RN’s. Ya’ll gonna dread my future posts! :-)

Re: Using nursing theory to define health

Nursing theories? Wow. It's been a while. Honestly, not something I think about these days, but grad school will always make one think in new ways. You go, girl!

Re: Using nursing theory to define health

I love Margaret Neuman's idea that health = expanding conciousness.  Caroline Myss would approve.  William Blake would approve. 
So many say there would be less poverty if there was more education for the poor and I wonder where will the jobs come from?  Well, if you expand your conciousness you will be healthier and maybe you won't need a job.  
An  AARP journal has a teaser for an article on the cover-“Live better, spend less”.  Health can't be obtained by taking more pills.  Health happens in your awareness.