Author – Katherine C. Rosa, PhD, CNP, FNP-BC

Year First Published – 2006

Major Concepts

• Nurse patient relationship 
• Wholistic healing 
  • Self-awareness 
  • Deepening Awareness 
  • Appreciating Meaning 
  • Personal Transformation 
• Environment of Care

Typology

Brief Description

From- Rosa, K. C., (2006). A process model of wholistic healing and
personal transformation in persons with chronic skin wounds. Nursing
Science Quarterly, 19(4), 357.

The process model of wholistic healing and personal transformation describes participants’ healing journey when guided by the nurse through phases of self-awareness, deepening awareness, appreciating meaning, and transformation. The center circle as core represents the central nature of the nurse-patient experience to  the process. The nurse-patient relationship is a mutually synchronous process of creating partnership, understanding specific circumstances, recognizing responses, choices, and actions, and increasing connectedness. The nurse offers support, reflection, caring, and teaching, and validates healing throughout the process. Patients bring their self- gained knowledge over a lifetime of experiences, as well as specific circumstance of living with a chronic skin wound. The nursing praxis approach creates a purposeful mutually  interactive environment of care for the patient as depicted by the largest circle. (From Rosa, K. C., (2006). A process model of wholistic healing and personal transformation in persons with chronic skin wounds. Nursing Science Quarterly, 19(4), 357.

Primary Sources

Rosa, K. (2006). A process model of personal healing and transformation in persons with chronic skin wounds. Nursing Science Quarterly, 19(4), 349-358.

Rosa, K. (2011). The process of healing transformations: A model for holistic practice. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 29(4), 322-337.

Author

Katherine C. Rosa 

While in my masters program, Martha E. Roger’s Science of Unitary Human Beings captured my imagination. Later during my doctoral program, Carol Picard presented her research on, Pattern of expanding consciousness in midlife women, igniting a spark within me! I quickly changed my research question from a focus on Therapeutic Touch to use Newman’s theory of health as expanding consciousness with persons living with chronic skin wounds. I discovered the beauty of engaging in mutual discovery through dialogue surpassed the communication style I’d honed over years as a nurse practitioner. From this research, a Process Model of Healing and Personal Transformation emerged. This work received the Young Investigator’s award from the Association for the Advancement of Wound Care, an international multidisciplinary organization.

Building upon this work, I conducted an exploratory study to further understand pregnant Cambodian American women’s responses to life challenges. Findings from these two works suggested the phenomenon of appreciating meaning was a pivotal component of the nurse patient praxis relationship. With support from the Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research’s Connell Nursing Research Scholar’s Award at Massachusetts General Hospital, I conducted an integrative review on the nurse patient relationship. Twenty years of research using Newman’s theory of health as expanding consciousness praxis approach with persons with chronic illness was reviewed to examine the use of the nurse-patient relationship and its seven dimensions of health, caring, consciousness, mutual process, patterning, presence and meaning. An article reporting these results was published in Nursing Science Quarterly. Presently, my scholarly work is focused on developing a tool to measure patients’ perceptions of their nurse-patient relationship facilitating healing. I have presented papers at international conferences, published in scholarly journals, and am a member of the Society of Rogerian Scholars, Sigma Theta Tau International, International Association of Human Caring, and Therapeutic Touch International Association. I work at the Benson Henry Institute of Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital as a nurse practitioner.