Nursing the soul

Many diseases are recognized to be the result of a changing society and related to nutrition, alcohol, smoking and, not least, stress. What is not overtly recognized is that many of these diseases are the results of a society that alienates people from themselves and each other and biomedicine is demonstrably unable to provide answers to this. Identifying the need for social answers to disease is part of the answer but if healing of people in the true sense of the word is to be achieved, spiritual dimensions of care are fundamentally important and a more healing approach is required which works to promote the body's self healing powers. Nurses have always had a healing role and this is currently being rediscovered. The essential spiritual aspects to this healing role calls for a new philosophy, an approach that needs the support of nurse education and nurse management. The movement towards a more therapeutic approach may be what underpins the current move into complementary therapies by qualified nurses, demonstrating their response to the dominant ideology of distancing and detachment so prevalent in the market economy of health.