Complementary therapy in chronic wound management: a holistic caring case study and praxis model

Holistic caring consists of providing care to each aspect of a patient's life through the use of therapeutic caring and complementary or alternative healing modalities. Since nursing consists of caring for the whole person and not just the disease process, consideration of a patient's physical, emotional, social, economic, spiritual, and cultural needs is necessary in dealing with any chronic health problem such as chronic wounds. In this model case studies presentation, the purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of the holistic caring approach and the use of complementary and alternative medicine or therapeutic modalities in chronic wound management. The use or role of theory in practice will also be discussed to emphasize the holistic caring praxis model used in the holistic assessment and holistic plan of care for the cases presented. This article also presents a framework that will help wound care and holistic nurses move from simply the positivist-modernist philosophy to begin to embrace the postmodernist philosophy.