Self in relation: a prolegomenon for holistic nursing.

We have outlined some of the characteristics of holistic nursing and have named and explored the concepts that we believe are important to holistic practice. We have outlined assumptions that offer to nursing a more caring and connected way of interacting with clients than currently exists in nursing practice. We do not have answers to the questions of how to implement this practice within the structure of current nursing practice. Occasionally when we discuss these ideas with other nurses, they tell us that nursing as currently practiced in hospitals and community agencies is just the "real world," as though we had better get used to it. Maybe the world that we have presented is the "unreal world," for the moment at least. We are proud to live and learn in this unreal world and in a community of folks who make their living in holistic practice. If we had to make our living working in the "real world" of health care, could we do something to change it before the conflicts drove us away? The concluding question is, "Will nurses use their joint power to build therapeutic environments within nursing, or must they defect from nursing to practice holistic care?"