Koolcaba's Theory Of Comfort Theory

Nursing is as much science as it is a study in the human condition. Combining caring and the notion of human flourishing allows the nurse sharpen her understanding of patients’ needs by observing and understanding herself (Husted & Husted, 2008). A nurse is able to better anticipate the needs of her patients by noting similarities and differences between the two of them. With caring in the nursing corner, even under less-than-ideal conditions, one can still create havens of hope, nourishment, and the possibility for flourishing (MacCulloh, 2011).

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.

The concepts of the comfort theory are clearly defined and the relationships are easily understood. This theory is simple and basic to nursing care. The taxonomic structure of comfort facilitates researchers’ development of comfort instruments for new settings (Kolcaba,1991).The first assertion of the theory stating that effective comfort interventions leads to increased comfort for patients , has been tested and supported with women with breast cancer (Kolcaba & Fox, 1999), persons with UI (Dowd, Kolcaba, & Steiner, 2000), persons in hospice (Kolcaba, Dowd, Steiner, & Mitzel, 2004). And stressed college students (Dowd, Kolcaba, Steiner, & Fashinapaur, 2007). Also, the second assertion was supported in the UI study, when patients with enhanced comfort showed increased HSBs.

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

Nursing got defined according to the meta-paradigm for its ability to develop and sustain a connection and concern, which gets exhibited through the existence of a strong relationship between the patients and the nurses. According to Masters, (206), nursing gets views as the nature of care and the research into the illness, health and disease, and the relationship between the three aspects of a patient’s body. In my position as a Registered Nurse, we engaged in various missions aimed at checking the wellness of patients and the sustainable healthcare of the patients.

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).

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

Kristen M. Swanson’s Caring Theory is the solution in bridging the gap between nursing practice and theory. It offers an explanation of the links between patient well-being and the caring process (Tonges & Ray, 2011). Swanson explained that nurses should be able to demonstrate that they care about their patients, and that caring about their wellbeing is as important as their patients’ current medical problem (Tonges & Ray, 2011).

In my nursing practice, I frequently care for dying patients. Instead of simply providing medication to ease pain during the dying process, I wanted to learn about ways to enhance the comfort of the dying patients and possibly assist their family during a difficult time. This desire led me to examine the conceptual model of comfort. Through my research of the concept of comfort care at end of life, I discovered Katherine Kolcaba’s theory of comfort. I found her theory to be useful in describing the concept of comfort care and decided to further analyze it for a more thorough understanding of its usefulness and applicability to nursing practice. Nurses are the ones in direct contact with their patients, providing relief from certain discomforts, continuously assessing, monitoring and providing care that will ensure the patient is at ease. According to Kolcaba, “Comfort is the desirable state that nurses would want for their patients.” (Kolcaba, 2003). With its fundamental emphasis on physical, psychospiritual, sociocultural, and environmental aspects of comfort, the Theory of Comfort care will contribute to a proactive and multifaceted approach to care. This paper aims to describe the origin of Comfort Theory, its primary concepts and relational statements, review of the literature, critique describing its strength and limitation as a middle range theory

It is evident that nursing theorists, scholars and health care professions have varying interpretations of what caring is or should be. In the middle of all these disparity, caring is a vital component of the nursing practice and the key to choosing the concept of caring is because it is very essential when it comes to health care. This paper tries to make clear the concept of caring in the field of nursing and it makes use of the Walker and Avant outline to support the concept. It starts with recognizing the concept and its functions. It then identifies three emerging attributes of caring will be identified and a description of each will be given. At last, the paper will recognize antecedents, the effects or consequences and

Person is the recipient of nursing care. The person relating to the theory of comfort includes individuals, families, institutions, or communities.

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

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.

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.