The meaning of holism in nursing: historical shifts in holistic nursing ideas.

Throughout the history of nursing, holistic ideas can be identified that reflect nursing's ambivalence towards changes in health care and in ideas about illness during the 19th and 20th century. The relationship between historical context and the meaning of holism in nursing is described using historical as well as conceptual analyses. Three important periods are discussed: holistic public health nursing in the beginning of the century, a shift towards holistic hospital nursing in the middle of the century, and a modern holistic health nursing model that emerged in the 1960s. Each period reflects a different perspective on nursing's struggle to gain status as a profession, its complicated relationship with medicine, and its difficulty in maintaining the tradition of care and compassion within an industrialized society that becomes more individualized and fragmented.