Why was the Samueli Institute interested in becoming a Platinum Sponsor of the 2010 International Year of the Nurse Celebration?
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| Wayne Jonas |
Samueli Institute is proud to be a Platinum Sponsor of the 2010 International Year of the Nurse (IYNurse) Celebration. We want to honor nurses and recognize their invaluable role in health care. Nurses, as the largest group of health care providers in the world, are the backbone of the health care system. They provide the human touch essential to health and healing. At the Samueli Institute, our mission is to transform health care through scientific exploration of healing. We see nurses as important partners in health care’s transformation.
Barbara Dossey, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, a member of the board of directors of Samueli Institute, has been instrumental to the success of the 2010 IYNurse Celebration. She is the international co-director of the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH) which, along with the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International, and the Florence Nightingale Museum in London, are co-founders of 2010 IYN. Dossey is an advocate for achieving the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals, especially the goal of improving maternal health. Samueli Institute supports these global efforts and is contributing to them through research and education on creating optimal healing environments, reducing health care disparities and the role of nursing in health care. Sponsoring the 2010 International Year of the Nurse Celebration is an additional way for the Institute to recognize the essential role of nurses in achieving these important goals.
What is Samueli Institute?
Samueli Institute is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) research organization that supports scientific investigation of healing processes and their role in medicine and health care. Founded in 2001 by Henry and Susan Samueli, the Institute is advancing the science of healing worldwide. Its focus includes research on integrative medicine, optimal healing environments, the role of the mind in healing, behavioral medicine, health care policy, and military and veterans health care. As a nonprofit service organization, Samueli Institute serves as a facilitator of research on healing, making discoveries, developing relationships, conducting research and building a rigorous science that results in shared knowledge, improved patient care and healthful living. Our vision is a world in which healing is the formative concept for achieving and maintaining wellness and ameliorating chronic disease.
Tell us more about the Institute’s Optimal Healing Environments program.
Samueli Institute’s Optimal Healing Environments (OHE) program seeks to build the knowledge base of health care practices that influence the healing process of recovery, repair and return to wholeness. OHE is unique in that it is a comprehensive approach to health care that encompasses all of the social, psychological, organizational, behavioral and physical conditions that contribute to healing and achievement of wholeness. OHE research is conducted in real-world settings, including hospitals, outpatient clinics, workplaces, and among specialized populations, to demonstrate how healing translates directly into current health care practices. Optimal healing environments are created through eight domains that include the inner environment of the patient and caregiver, the interpersonal environment of relationships and healing practices, and the external environment of healing spaces and sustainable communities.
The eight domains of an optimal healing environment are:
- Developing healing intention
- Experiencing personal wholeness
- Cultivating healing relationships
- Creating healing organizations
- Practicing healthy lifestyles
- Applying integrative health care
- Building healing spaces
- Fostering ecological sustainability
What do you see as the role of nursing in advancing creation of optimal healing environments in health care organizations?
In 2009, Samueli Institute convened the Nursing Forum, comprised of a dynamic group of 28 nurse researchers and other nurse leaders, who represent key national nursing organizations, hospitals and health systems, to explore the role of nursing in creating optimal healing environments. Nursing Forum participants developed a consensus statement calling for a coalition of nursing organizations to provide shared learning opportunities, challenge assumptions about healing and health care, and strengthen nursing leadership for the creation of optimal healing environments and to transform health care.
The Institute has also interviewed these and other nurse leaders to identify nurse-led healing initiatives that have focused on the creation of a more holistic, healing-oriented health care system in the United States. We found that nurses have influenced creation of optimal healing environments in health care settings by creating and making operational models of nursing that focus on whole-person care and healing, the influence of organizational culture on the patient experience, and development and implementation of educational and training initiatives that prepare and certify nurses to practice in a holistic, healing-oriented manner.
Since then, we have been exploring ways to put our research, knowledge and expertise in the hands of leaders—both administrative and clinical—who are on the front lines of health care delivery. Next year, we plan to launch an educational, consulting and evaluation service to help these leaders advance creation of optimal healing environments in their organizations. We know nurses and nurse leaders will play a key role in making this happen. RNL
Wayne B. Jonas, MD, is president and chief executive officer of Samueli Institute.
