Kolcaba middle-range comfort theory was presented in the early 1990s, and it included three technical senses of comfort; relief, ease, and transcendence (Kolcaba, 2003). The nurse needs to identify the specific discomfort and the support required. After a nurse has identified and provided comfort interventions, the patient will move through the three technical senses. Kolcaba coined the patient’s comfort needs are met as the relief phase. She describes the next stage as ease and is reach once the patient is content. Lastly, she noted in the transcendence that the patient would be able to rise above the discomfort, leading to positive patient outcomes. Kolcaba stated holistic comfort is achieved through a context of four human experiences: physical, psychospiritual, sociocultural, and environment. She developed the taxonomic structure of comfort that incorporates all aspects of comfort theory (Kolcaba, 2003). The taxonomic structure is a grid with the three technical senses listed horizontal and the four human experiences listed vertically (Kolcaba, 2010). The grid can be used as a tool in the assessment and intervention process by tracking the patient’s progress through the stages of comfort. …show more content…
For example, Kolcaba’s analysis established that the most predominant detractor from comfort was a patient experiencing pain (Kolcaba, 2003). The nurse implements interventions individualized to alleviate a patient’s pain. These interventions can address environmental issues such as room temperature, physical conditions of the bed or bedding, or administration of pain medication. Pain can be a barrier to learning. However, once comfort is achieved, and transcendence has transpired then health promotion can be
By educating staff on nursing sensitive indicators and the issues that need to be addressed, could advance the quality of patient care throughout the hospital. In this case, educating hospital staff on ways to prevent restraint use and pressure sore prevention, the staff could have possible prevented the use of restraints and the pressure sore. Also, by educating staff on how to use restraints would be
pain is the usual cause for persons to look for treatment. Inadequate pain management can cause delay in healing process. It can also leads to prolonged hospital stay. The acute pain management theory describe how nurse can manage pain with minimal effects from the pharmacological interventions and use of alternative methods of pain management (Good &Moore, 1996) The main factors are in the management of pain are Pharmacological, non-pharmacological, patient participation, education and different interventions. Effective pain management involves the application of non-pharmacological interventions and usage of pain medications. (McEwen & Willis, 2014). The pain management theory deals with management of pain in daily basis. It offers the knowledge about alternate methods in pain
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 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
It is my personal belief that environment plays a considerable role in the patient’s short term and long-term wellbeing. When nurses acknowledge the environment that the patient is interacting in while receiving their care we know this greatly impacts the overall successfulness of the care plan. The patient’s feelings must be
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.
Patients and family members in medical intensive care units experience pain and anxiety while overcoming illness and disease. Nightingale was one of the first nurses to recognize that the relationship between health and comfort is strong and direct (Peterson & Bredow, 2013, p. 194). Kolcaba’s theory of comfort addresses the need for nurses to provide patients and families with relief, ease, and transcendence to facilitate health-seeking behavior (McEwen & Wills, 2011, p. 234). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Kolcaba’s theory of comfort (CT) using the Synthesized Method described by McEwen and Wills (2011) and to describe how this theory can be applied in practice.
Concept analysis of comfort Background : Comfort is an important concept and core value of nursing. comfort is a broad concept that has multiple uses in literature (Hu Li Za Zhi 2012) , it describes physical , emotional spiritual and psychological status changes in human being , Reference to the concept of comfort measures is growing in the nursing and medical literature (Oliveira,2013) .
There are many concepts in nursing theory that need further clarification. A concept analysis can provide a thorough explanation of a term in nursing theory that will help healthcare professionals better communicate. The Walker and Avant approach to perform a concept analysis was specifically formulated with nurses in mind (McEwen & Wills, 2014). Walker and Avant proposed a concept analysis be used to further understand the meaning of a term or concept in anticipation that those using the term would have the same understanding (McEwen & Wills, 2014). When a term or concept is in question or needs further questioning in any field of nursing, a concept analysis is indicated (McEwen & Wills, 2014). Walker and Avant’s concept analysis is comprised of eight steps; select a concept, determine the aim of the concept, list all possible uses of concept, defining attributes, model case, alterative case (borderline, related, contrary, invented, and illegitimate), list antecedents and consequences, and lastly list empirical referents (McEwen & Wills, 2014). The defining attributes are deemed most beneficial in obtaining comprehension due to the fact that these attributes show which show up in regularity when relating to the concept (Linda & Judith, 2011). Using the Walker and Avant concept analysis model a formal concept analysis will be performed on the term “pain”. Middle range nursing theory gave the example of pain as one of many concepts used in nursing (McEwen & Wills, 2014).
In the physical realm of patient-centered care pain, comfort, sleep, and rest are important aspects of the fourth dimension of patient-centered care. Patient-centered care is the complete focus of the medical team on providing respectful care to meet patient needs, preferences and values guide decisions on each individual patient care. To understand the subjective view of the patient, these four aspects are at the forefront of their needs within the hospital setting to provide the best patient outcome. Nurses provide good patient-centered care by actively partnering with patients to determine care priorities and plans to tailor their level of involvement, according to their preferences, and being flexible by changing the care plan as the situation changes including providing smooth transitions between care goals. By doing this, nurses can assist patients with all pain by providing comfort and assuring the patient that there will be no deficiency of their quality of sleep.
In the Comfort Theory, proposed by Catharine Kolcaba, the tradition of nursing discipline - deriving theory from former disciplines is examined, and the notion of former healthcare disciplines deriving nursing theory has been recommended. A short literature review of plagiarized theory sets the position to examine the modification of the theory. She describes convenience as one of the mechanisms for the full rehabilitation of the patient, and the personal desire of the patient to recovery across the permanency of the diseases. Holistic comfort has been described as the instant experience of being powered through having the requirements for relief, transcendence, and ease met in the four bases of experience (physical, environmental, psycho-spiritual, and social). Providing comfort is necessary for the care of a patient in the hospital background (March, 2009). Nowadays, comfort is being regarded as the last outcome for the terminally sick patient, and it is not seen as a standard hospital practice, when they prophylactically or for protocol, try to develop the patient’s health status. Theorist Katherine Kolcaba was among the first nurse researchers to advance a theory of comfort to develop patient’s outcomes and satisfaction, and to improve institutional integrity. This paper aims at describing the Comfort Theory, as well as its weaknesses and strengths as a middle-rank theory. It also defines its applications beyond the healthcare background, bases for further
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
Introduction Universal comfort is an optimal outcome of nursing care. Kolcaba defines comfort as the immediate state of being strengthened by having the human needs for relief, ease, and transcendence, addressed holistically (physically, psychospiritually, socioculturally, and environmentally). In nursing, comfort theory can be divided into three parts, and there are five main themes that patients use to describe their experience of comfort. Comfort care involves at least three types of comfort interventions that can be employed to improve patients’ overall level of comfort. Comfort is a desirable outcome that has been linked to effective engagement in health seeking behaviors.
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