THE MEANING OF HOLISM IN NURSING - HISTORICAL SHIFTS IN HOLISTIC NURSING IDEAS

Throughout the history of nursing, holistic ideas can be identified th at reflect nursing's ambivalence towards changes in health care and in ideas about illness during the 19th and 20th century. The relationshi p between historical context and the meaning of holism in nursing is d escribed using historical as well as conceptual analyses. Three import ant periods are discussed: holistic public health nursing in the begin ning 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 re lationship with medicine, and its difficulty in maintaining the tradit ion of care and compassion within an industrialized society that becom es more individualized and fragmented.