Comfort Concept in Nursing and Healthcare Delivery

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Selection of the Concept

Nursing is an important profession in any economy. Several concepts, methods, and styles of management in the nursing industry continue to arise to improve the health care service delivery. Empowerment, telemedicine, pain, leadership, comfort, home-care, among other concepts help the nursing professional improve on service delivery. This paper seeks to underscore the role of comfort as a nursing concept and understand its role in improving health care service delivery. From a black box perspective, comfort seems simple structure of happiness and satisfaction in life. However, in the nursing fraternity, comfort entails a complicated system of ensuring satisfaction of patients’ substantive needs.

Identification of the Aims of the Analysis

Comfort as concept in nursing presents starting point for several therapies. In patients within chronic illnesses, offering a stable and comfortable environment coupled with adequate medication help in improving the rate of disease management. Since most chronic diseases often lead to death, comfort offers hope and empathy that reaffirms the patients’ psychological desire to live on. The aim of analyzing this noble concept in nursing is to understand the different tenets of comfort and explore the related aspects in nursing necessary for successful patient care. Understanding comfort in nursing helps prospective nursing professionals and caregivers to integrate medical psychological, psychosocial, and emotional care in their program of patients’ care.

Review of Selected Scholarly Literature on the Comfort in Nursing

Comfort: A Value Forgotten in Nursing – Chia – Chin Lin

In his analysis, Chia-Chin (2010) defines comfort as a physical state of material well-being with unquestionable freedom from pain and trouble. He further argues that such as state must provide adequate and basic bodily needs with proper support in cases of mental distress, affliction, or solace. He therefore defines comfort in nursing as a feeling of strength, encouragement, support, and countenance among the patients and the nursing professionals. In his analysis, he takes a close look at stages of comfort in nursing arguing that for the first thirty years of the twentieth century, the nursing professional viewed comfort as a central focus and moral imperative in the provision of nursing care services. Between 1930 and 1959, Chia-Chin claims that comfort revolves around the strategies for ensuring fundamental basics of the nursing profession. In his series of analysis, he considers the period between 1960 and 1980 as the turning point for comfort as a concept in nursing. During this period, comfort received little attention from the nursing fraternity. It only came into play for patients with minimal medical care. Since the end of this transitional period comfort in nursing remains relegated to old age care strategies in community care homes under which its role is equivalent to the services non-professional caregivers offer (Chia-Chin, 2010).

Despite all these downward movement in the development of comfort in nursing, Chia-Chin maintains that comfort remains one of the substantive concepts in human care. Just like Florence Nightingale, the mother of nursing, affirms that nursing is a profession for saving life and increasing health and comfort, Chia-Chin argues that relegating comfort to periods of medical invalidity compromises the basics tenets of nursing profession. Chia-Chin further states that comfort in nursing requires specialization in studying and appreciate institutionalization of practices such as oncology which play a vital role in promoting and improving comfort for specific patients such as those suffering from cancer. Integrating comfort programs in home-based care strategies such as cancer related fatigues in women help in improving relief and encouragement. All these observations denote that adequate research and implementation of comfort strategies in the nursing sector helps in improving effectiveness of the nursing programs (Chia-Chin, 2010).

Analysis of Melanie Jane Legg’s Article

In exploring psychosocial facets, Melanie develops an in depth analysis of the issues and benefits arising from unique psychological medical services. Given the pivotal position nurses occupy in patients’ lives, Melanie argues that understanding patients’ characteristics on grounds of sexuality, religious affiliation, cultural background, and personal expectations play a vital role in developing adequate assessment of comfortable states thus help in improving medical recovery. Psychosocial care with proper focus on patients’ comfort receives minimal coverage in many hospitals. However, Melanie argues that integrating psychosocial care with medical care service allows patients to receive adequate informational and emotional services necessary for managing chronic conditions such as cancer (Melanie, 2013).

According to Melanie, psychosocial care revolves around effective communication skills with intricate abilities in showing empathy and compassion. In this context, caregivers stand high chances of passing adequate information and direction to the patients hence increasing chances of success. Creating successful relationship between the health care service practitioners in the comfort sector of nursing helps the two parties build trust necessary in opening up to cultural, personal, religious, racial, and regional believes and characters necessary for adequate understanding of the patients’ plight. In comfort under nursing, understanding, openness, respect, compassion, and ability to develop mutual goals helps in building up social support necessary for creating comfort for the patients. Such relationship creates barriers for distress and solace especially in cancer patients (Melanie, 2013).

The Role of the Nurse in Family Coping after Miscarriage – Wesley Hannebaum

In lieu to the study, American Pregnancy Association argues that women and men grieve differently in cases medical situations leading to depression (Hannebaum, 2014). For example in case of pregnancy miscarriages, the association claims that women talk about their predicament to relatives, friends, and health care practitioners while men try keeping busy to avoid feelings of the loss. Even though men engage in activities to avoid the thoughts of such predicament, their engagement with support groups and other comforting structures within the society remains relatively minimal compared to the women’s initiatives. even though men most men view strong displays of emotions as against the masculine role as a husband and father, American Pregnancy Association argues that men who engage in supporting group activities and express their emotive disappointments recover from the trauma faster than those who chose to keep away form support groups (Hannebaum, 2014).

Identification of Possible Use of Comfort in Nursing

According to Chia-Chin, Australia records more than a quarter million cancer diagnosis on an annual basis (2010). Considering these figures, Australia experiences high risks of deaths given the psychological and emotional dynamics that come with such diagnosis. In his analysis, Chia – Chin further argues that more than sixty percent of cancer patients face difficulties in dealing with the subsequent emotional and psychosocial problems. Inability of many oncologists to integrate comfort and emotional support initiatives in their program further compromises the recovery of such patients. Psychosocial care an emotional support therefore, brings huge impacts on cancer patients whose situations deteriorate given the cumulative emotional and psychosocial distress they go through. Emotional support improves the situation given the broad based approach employed in the treatment and care program that encompass physical, social, cognitive, and emotional facets. Adequately addressing emotive issues and their physically instigated impacts on patients helps nurses and other caregivers improve on the service delivery among patients with chronic diseases.

McEwen and Wills (2014) note that developing adequate understanding of personal, social, racial, and emotional orientation of patients helps in identifying patients’ risks of poor adjustments to treatments and care programs. Early detection of such trends helps in developing new mechanisms concerning the patients’ orientation. Such mechanism ensures restoration of feelings of optimism and hope among the patients. In order to develop an understanding of the social, psychological, cultural, and racial orientation of patients’, caregivers need to develop trustworthy relationship with the patients.

Determination of Defining Attributes in Comfort

Attributes in nursing represent the vital signs under which normal body system works in patients under care. In order to ensure successful comfort program, attributes such as disease process, self-esteem, positioning, and staff approach, and hospital life remains important. Understanding disease life ensure both the nurses and patients understand the issues around the conditions such as associated pain and disabilities. Self-esteem reaffirms patients’ abilities to accept their psychological status, the level of adjustments to their status, and their general feelings on the program. Positioning takes into account the body postures and placements of patients’ bodies in chairs and beds. Staffs developing friendly and compassionate relationship with patients help build trust between the two parties while hospital life revolves developing homelike maintenance programs that ensures the patients develop a sense of feeling at home.

Identification of Model Cases in Comfort in Nursing

“Dear Nurse, You are responsible for my recovery, I hope you will remember that…You were key to my overcoming the odds, beating the coronary artery disease that all but ended my life…It was you gave me the will to live….You gave me the enthusiasm I needed to accept and to adapt …” (Parker & Smith, 2010).

This extract contains attributes and tenets of complete comfort situation. Relief, ease, and transcendence in the patient’s physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and environmental all occur in this model as the nurse take care of the patient with coronary artery disease.

Identification of Alternate Cases

Borderline case

Borderline cases contain aspects limited number of aspects critical to all the attributes necessary for a comfort program in nursing. For example, if a nurse taking care of individuals in a given ward offers all the services in smiling and compassionate tone but fails to give enough time for a close relationship with the patients presents a borderline case. For instance, when a compassionate nurse moves into a ward to change the bag from an IV patient with efficiency, speed, and uttermost care but leaves the ward before offering a listening ear to the patient, presents inadequacy in the patient’s psychosocial support and comfort. Even though the nurse performs her professional duty, listening, responding, and caring to needy patients help improve the social comfort necessary for medical improvement (Parker & Smith, 2010).

Related case

Related cases represent concepts with close replication of the comfort concept in nurses but without basic attributes. Safety is an example of related concept in nursing. Safety in nursing entails protection from injuries, diagnostic errors, nosocomial infections, untidy conditions, false information, nasty and negligent personnel among others. Even though patients feel comfortable in areas with maximum safety, critical attributes of transcendence and compassion remains lacking. This not only jeopardizes the nurses’ desires to create cordial and trustworthy relationships with patients but also minimizes scope of mutual understanding between the two parties (Parker & Smith, 2010).

Identification of Antecedents and Consequences

In order to develop absolute comfort among the patients, nurses must ensure inclusion of all the attributes associated with the concept of comfort. Developing a system that takes into account relief, ease, and transcendence in the social, psychological, cultural, environmental, and physical aspects presents the greatest antecedents in this concept. Irrespective of the nursing courses, motivation and communications skills, patients’ natural expectations, and intervention measures developing an absolute comfort scenario remains stressful to the health care service providers (Velikova, 2010).

Relief from symptoms, reduced suffering, increased sense of control, and feelings of belonging are some of the positive impacts arising from comfort in nursing. However, negative consequences also exist such as developing comfort systems for patient creates a new culture in their medical lives. Confining such behaviors to laboratory work is a dangerous consequence in the concept. Internal behaviors include homeostatic contrivances like oxygen saturation and cardiac outputs. External behaviors include ambulation, successful discharge, and observance of medical procedure. Peaceful death on the other hand takes place when parties resolve care conflicts and consent to medically instigated death of the patient (Velikova, 2010).

Definition of Empirical Referents

As Walker and Avant (2010) denote, empirical referents represent categories of actual phenomena depicting the presence of a concept. In nursing comfort, attributes and themes in comfort represent the empirical referents of the concept. Example of empirical referent measuring units include the level of inspiration an hospital view gives the patients, the nature of relationship between the nurses and the patients, and the frequency of chats between the two parties. Taking into account relief, ease, and transcendence perspectives ensures consideration of all the tenets of empirical referents of attributes associated with comfort in nursing.

Conclusion

Even though technological advancement in the health care service provision continues to revolutionize types and methods of prescription and treatment, making patients feel comfortable needs close human touch and feel. Comfort in nursing remains firmly engrained in the rising role of caregivers and professional nurses responsible for daily care assessments of patients’ progress. Psychosocial care and comfort as many scholars argue depends on the nursing fraternity, functions of the nurses, basic human needs of the patients’, and the process of satisfying patients’ tastes and preferences. Understanding, communication skills, and compassion help nurses and caregivers perfect the concept of comfort in nursing.

References

Chia-Chin, L (2010). Comfort: A Value Forgotten in Nursing. Journal of Curse Nursing 33(6), 10-27.

Hannebaum, W. (2014). The Role of the Nurse in Family Coping after Miscarriage. Web.

McEwen, M., & Wills, E. M. (2014). Theoretical basis for nursing (4th ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Melanie, J. L. (2013). What is the psychosocial care and how can nurses better provide it to adult oncology patients? Australian Journal Of Advanced Nursing, 28(3), 61-67. Web.

Parker, M. E., & Smith, M. C. (2010). Nursing theories and nursing practice. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Co.

Velikova, G. (2010). Patient Benefits From Psychosocial Care: Screening for Distress and Models of Care. American Society of Clinical Oncology, 28(33), 4871-4873.

Walker, L.O. & Avant, K. C. (2010). Strategies for theory construction in nursing (5^thed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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