Identifying Holistic Nursing Research Priorities for 2023-2026.

The primary goal of holistic nursing research is to develop and expand the knowledge base of holism and healing for nursing praxis. This article provides an overview of the process used to identify the research priorities for holistic nursing research over the next 3 to 5 years. A mixed method design using Appreciative Inquiry and surveys revealed five research priorities and the holistic philosophical foundation for these priorities. Additionally, new challenges in the environment, person, health, and nursing will undoubtedly emerge, requiring nurses to discern the research needs beyond 2026. This work seeks to inspire holistic nurses to consider research related to the American Holistic Nurses Association's five key research priorities.

Advanced Holistic Nursing Practice Narratives: A View of Caring Praxis.

Advanced holistic nurses (AHNs), emerging as leaders in health care transformation, are described as caregivers, but caring and caring-within-practice are often difficult for AHNs to explicate. Nursing research that describes caring in advanced practice is limited. Only one study has been reported that focused on describing practice for advanced practice nurses. This article presents a secondary analysis of narratives from a larger qualitative study of holistic pediatric nursing practice. From that study, narratives provided by six holistic advanced practice nurse participants, working in a variety of settings, were extracted and analyzed to illuminate caring-within-practice. Participants were asked to write a reflective narrative on a patient exemplar of caring and use John's model for structured reflection to provide a deeper reflection on their narrative of caring. Researchers analyzed the extracted narratives to identify common themes of caring-within-practice. Seven themes emerged depicting AHNs caring-within-practice: normalizing the environment, creating sacred space, being rooted in compassion, the art of being present, establishing trust-caring, coaching the family as caregiver, and inspiration for the future. This article provides excerpts from the narratives that support the themes, discusses the findings, and presents implications of the study.

Holistic nurses' stories of healing of another.

The purpose of this study was to uncover the essence and meaning of healing through narrative accounts of holistic nurses, using a qualitative, descriptive design integrating narrative and story inquiry. Twenty-five stories were collected. Seven stories revealed personal healing and have been published in a prior article. Eighteen stories, the focus of this analysis, revealed healing of another. A hybrid method blending narrative and story guided the overall process for the study. Nine themes emerged describing healing of another within three story segments: The Call to Healing, The Experience of Healing, and Insights. The theme within The Call to the Healing Encounter was Drawn by Compassion to the Vulnerability and/or Suffering of Another. Five themes describe the Experience of Healing: Connection: Cocreating Relationships; Taking Risks and Dealing With Skeptical Colleagues; Use of Modalities and Actions as Tools in Developing Self as an Instrument of Healing; Profound, Ineffable Events; and Using Metaphor and Rituals to Describe Healing. Three themes describe Insights: Mutual Transformation, Change, and Reciprocity; Gratitude for the Healing Encounter; and Leaving a Legacy. The metastory, a reconstructed story created by the researchers, was the final phase of research synthesizing and demonstrating themes of healing of another. Results were compared to existing healing literature.