Katharine Kolcaba Comfort Theory

Nursing should not be looked upon or practiced as a mere physical approach to healing. Nursing should encompass the aspect of restoring each individual patient to his/her maximum physical and emotional state of being. In order to achieve such a goal, a patient must be able to bond with her caregiver on a personal level (Blais & Hayes, 2011). Jean Watson’s caritas factors sets an environment where the patient can obtain optimum health benefits (Blais & Hayes, 2011). The goal of this paper is to state my philosophy of nursing, the important dynamics and values that led me to adopting this philosophy, and the reason why I choose nursing as a profession. I will further explain how Jean Watson’s principles of philosophy is

Nursing theories have been a fundamental tool used to explain, guide and improve the practice of nursing. Theorists have contributed enormously to the growth of nursing as a profession. The four grand theorists I chose are Virginia Henderson, Peplau, Myra Levine and Jean Watson. These theorists have contributed tremendously in the field of nursing through their theories, and research. One thing the theorists have in common is that they are patient centered. They are all concerned on ways we can improve our responsibility to the patients, their families and the environment. They have different ideas but they are all aiming towards achieving the same goal, which is patient satisfaction and safety. Their differences are in their areas of

The nurse also has to be aware of the nature of the nurse-patient relationship, the environment in which it takes place in, as well as an understanding of the context and the moment of the interactions in order to share a meaningful experience. Finally, nurses have to be passionate about his or her career. Nurse’s care and tend to the patients’ needs because nurses are passionate about the career. Even though the fundamental pattern of personal knowing, it provides a holistic nature of knowing. Many humanistic theories and models of nursing have been derived from personal knowing such as Peplau’s interpersonal relation theory, Kolcaba’s comfort theory, and Jean Watson’s theory of caring.

This theory has been a guiding frame for a lot of studies and researches. Some of the areas are nurse midwifery, perioperative nursing, urinary bladder control, orthopedic nursing, etc. For clinical practice, the perianesthesia nurses incorporated comfort theory in managing their patients’ comfort. The comfort theory was also used as a teaching philosophy in a fast- track nursing education program for students. Kolcaba developed the General Comfort Questionnaire to measure holistic comfort in a sample of hospital and community participants. She also asserts that emphasizing and

She later described the human as an energy field with illness and health being manifestations of the human pattern. Her continued study outlined relationships her theory has based off of her propositions. One of the relationships is the transpersonal caring field, which stays within the unitary field of consciousness. It signifies the unitary spiritual connection between the nurse and the patient. A transpersonal caring relationship goes beyond the ego levels of the patient and the nurse. It creates new possibilities for interaction. The practitioner’s consciousness about the carative factors and intentions opened up connections in the unitary field. This enables more access to the patient’s inner healing. The provider communicates the transpersonal relationship through different ways such as being present in the relationship. Caring-healing modalities are often noninvasive, natural-human energetic field modalities. Transpersonal caring promotes self-patterns and possibilities. Advanced transpersonal caring modalities recognize wholeness, healing, comfort, balance, harmony and well-being (McEwen & Wills, 2014, pg.

Those two theories are Florence Nightingale’s theory of the important of the environment and Katharine Kolcaba’s theory of comfort. Both of these theories are lacking in the emergency room because of the lack a therapeutic environment for these patients. The goal for most emergency room physician is to keep the patient safe until the patient can be moved to an inpatient pscyharitic unit (Nicks & Manthey, 2012, p. 2). By the physicians having this mentality, it does not allow the patient to start his or her healing process in the emergency room while the patient is boarding waiting for an inpatient bed to become available. With the implementation of both of the nursing theories mentioned above this writer believes that it will change the environment that the patient is in and will teach the physicians to start to treat these patients and in turn, it will provide the patients with the quality care that he or she

Conceptual analysis is integral in understanding nursing theory. According to Walker and Avant (1995), concept analysis allows nursing scholars to examine the attributes or characteristics of a concept. It can be used to evaluate a nursing theory and allows for examination of concepts for relevance and fit within the theory. The phenomena of pain will be discussed in this paper and how it relates to the comfort theory.

The comfort theory is a nursing theory that was first developed in the 1990s by Katharine Kolcaba. The Theory of Comfort considers patients to be individuals, families, institutions, or communities in need of health care (Petiprin, 2015). The environment in which this theory can be applied is in any aspect of the patient, family, or institutional surroundings that can be controlled by a nurse or a patient’s loved one by means to enhance their comfort. Health is considered to be optimal functioning in the patient, as defined by the patient, group, family, or community (Kolcaba, 2005).

The idea of comfort and theory started to develop as early 1859, with Florence Nightingale. This inspiration continued to progress with other theorists such as Ida Jean Orlando and Virginia Henderson. Katherine Kolcaba is a newer middle range theorist. She

The concept of comfort is one that nurses provide every shift; however, it is not always easy to define. Katherine Kolcaba’s Comfort Theory will be used. Walker and Avant’s method for concept analysis will be used. The first step is to select a concept, which is comfort. The next step is determining the purpose of the analysis. The purpose is to define what comfort means and what comfort measures are and how they are used in nursing. The third step is to identify the uses of the concept of comfort. This includes definitions of term comfort and a literature search. The fourth step is to determine the defining attributes of comfort. This allows for insight into the

Comfort is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary (2014) as “a state or situation in which you are relaxed and do not have any physically unpleasant feelings caused by pain, heat, cold, etc.” or as “a state or feeling of being less worried, upset, frightened, etc., during a time of trouble or emotional pain.” Dictionary.com (2014) defines comfort as “a feeling of relief or consolationm” or “a person or thing that gives consolation,”or “ a state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety.” Dictionary.com (2014) lists the origin of the word comfort as coming from the 13th century Old French term confort, meaning “source of alleviation or relief.” One can see there are multiple meanings and interpretations of the word comfort. This paper will set forth to discuss the word comfort as a concept and its interpretation and use in many disciplines, including its significance in nursing.

The developmental stages of the mid range theory of comfort are discussed in this article, which includes its philosophic orientation and its inductive, deductive, and retroductive reasoning. Other steps that are described are the concept analysis of comfort, the operationalization of the outcome of patient comfort, the application of the theory in previous nursing studies, and the evaluation of the current theory as it has been adapted for outcomes research. This article is a guide that shows how a concept grows, becomes embedded in theory, is tested, and is adapted for the rapidly changing health care environment. The theory of comfort

Middle range theories are created by translating and identifying lived experiences with a connection to well-being and nursing. In Katherine Kolcaba's Theory of Comfort she invested much energy analyzing the links and results of patients in connection to comfort. Katherine Kolcaba initially composed the Theory of Comfort given Alzheimer's and dementia patients. Be that as it may, Katherine herself has co-composed different articles about different extents of nursing identified with her hypothesis. Two late articles were composed applying her hypothesis to per anesthesia nursing and hospice nursing.

It is estimated that nurse investigators will stay expressing or humanizing grand theories and increasing new MR theories. As nursing science collects information at the levels of remark and suggestion, universal philosophy may give manner at times to MR theory, which is grounded in recognizable theories. At some upcoming period, nurse theorists can produce the fruits of MR philosophies, such as the theory of comfort, and coming back to grand theorizing from a lately considered and knowledgeable point of view. Middle range theory has been established to be valuable in both investigation and practice.

This theory explains, describes, guides, and supports nursing practice. It gives language to the unspoken beliefs and perspectives of the nursing profession. This allows the nursing professionals to better envision, realize, and articulate their unique role in healthcare (Green & Robichaux, 2009). Human caring is the basis of therapeutic relationships between human beings (Wade & Kasper, 2006)