Contributor – Wyona M. Freysteinson, PhD, MN, RN, FAAN

This blog shares a simple moment that became a powerful reminder of how quiet intuition, presence, and energy can shape the experience of patients and families in ways we may never fully understand. When I was asked to share a story from my 50 years in nursology, I wasn’t sure where to begin. There have been so many unforgettable moments – times that I felt guided by something far bigger than myself.

I remember sitting with a dying man and suddenly hearing myself say, “I will stay here until you die.” My logical mind immediately protested: You have 30 patients and one LVN! Yet I stayed, and two to three minutes later, he passed away.

Then there was the young teenager with a severe head injury. The neurosurgeon kept telling the family that staying unconscious on a ventilator was his only hope. But something deep inside me whispered to them, He will wake up. And he did.

After decades of nursing, I’ve come to believe there is an energy that connects all of us – an invisible current we sometimes sense more than we understand. Martha Rogers, one of nursing’s great thinkers, described people as energy fields within a larger universe of energy, a view that resonates with ideas from quantum physics about interconnectedness and non-linear effects. Whether you call that energy God, Spirit, or intuition, I tell my students: If it’s safe, trust your gut and follow that quiet inner knowing.

A Morning at the Hospice

One bright morning, I was walking into the hospice unit to begin my clinical rotation as a master’s in nursing student when a woman waved me down from a doorway. “Could you stay with my brother while I run to the restroom?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said.

Her brother was lying in bed, his breathing uneven—the familiar pattern of Cheyne–Stokes respirations we often see near the end of life. His face was tense with pain, and I promised myself that as soon as his sister came back, I would check whether he could have additional medication.

The sunlight pouring through the window was too bright, so I adjusted the blinds and changed the lighting above his bed until the room was bathed in a soft, diffused glow-what I have always called angel lighting. In that quiet moment, everything felt gentler, as if the room itself had shifted.

That’s when I noticed a large radio on the overbed table beside his bed. Beside it was a wooden stand filled with, what looked like, more than a hundred cassette tapes. I turned my back on my patient, and normally, I would never touch a patient’s personal belongings without permission, especially something as personal as their music. But something – intuition, instinct, energy – nudged me toward the cassette tapes. Without looking at the labels, I picked one tape, slipped it into the player, and pressed “play.”

I kept looking at the radio as soft, soothing music filled the room. I inhaled deeply. I had just begun to exhale when I heard a voice behind me.

“What have you done?”

My stomach dropped. Oh no. I shouldn’t have touched that.

But when I turned, his sister wasn’t angry – she looked stunned. “How did you know?” she whispered.

“Know what?” I asked.

Tears filled her eyes. “Of all the tapes on that stand, that’s the only one my brother made. It’s him – playing his instrument.”

I stood there in quiet awe, watching my patient’s face relax as his features softened into deep peace.

That was his music.

The Energy of Caring

Moments like that remind me that nursology is about far more than tasks, protocols, and medication schedules. It is also about presence, relationship, and the willingness to be open to what we cannot always explain.

Rogers’ view of human beings as irreducible, indivisible energy fields invites us to see these experiences not as accidents or paranormal, but as part of the way our presence and awareness interact with the larger field of life. In newer Rogerian thinking, ideas such as “pandimensional awareness” and “integral presence” describe how we may tune into both visible and invisible aspects of experience in caring moments. For me, these concepts put words to what many already know in their hearts: something happens when we are fully present, grounded, and willing to listen with more than our ears.

Over the years, I have stopped dismissing these experiences as coincidences. Whether we name them intuition, energy, or divine guidance, I have seen how they shape the stories of patients and families – and our own stories. When we listen to that inner voice with compassion and humility, our care can cross the boundaries of what we usually think of as “science” and touch something sacred.

About Wyona M. Freysteinson

Wyona M. Freysteinson, PhD, MN, RN, FAAN, is a Professor in the Nelda C. Stark College of Nursing at Texas Woman’s University in Houston, Texas. She has been a nurse for 50 years and has practiced in many clinical areas, but has resisted identifying herself solely by medical specialty labels such as “emergency nurse” or “neurosurgery nurse,” preferring to focus on the patient’s experience instead. After discovering Nursology, she embraced the term “nursologist” to describe her commitment to a discipline and profession centered on human experience, caring, and nurse–person-environment relationships.