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Healing the Whole: Holistic Nurse's New Approach

When Glenda Christiaens gave birth to her first child, her doctor, whom she had been seeing regularly for nine months, congratulated her on delivering right on time.

But the West Jordan woman was way overdue.

Turned off by feeling like “just another number,” the mechanical atmosphere of the hospital and her doctor’s demeanor, Christiaens felt motivated to give birth to two of her next three children at home. After hours of detailed research on how to do that safely, she was inspired to become a nurse.

“I didn’t like what I was seeing in the hospital and I decided to be in a really supportive environment,” she said. “You have to know a lot to have your baby at home. I thought, ‘I want to be a nurse and I want to make a difference.’ “

Christiaens, an associate professor at Brigham Young University for eight years, currently teaches community health nursing and integrated health practices, covering topics on complementary forms of healing like traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, massage, yoga, healing touch and color therapy—but her primary mission is to teach all of her students to take a loving, non-judgemental approach to nursing care.

After years of working with the American Holistic Nurses Association to provide nurses with better educational resources to train to be holistic nurses, she was elected to serve on the governing body of AHNA, which has 3,800 members.

Jeanne Crawford, executive director of AHNA, said due to Christiaens’ popularity and hard work within the organization, she “won by a lot.”

Christiaens’ interest in holistic nursing became serious after she enrolled in the nursing program at the University of Utah. It was a special professor who showed Christiaens that nurses and doctors could do their jobs and at the same time do more to engage their patients to aid in healing.

“I just felt like I was on sacred ground and I was witnessing something wonderful,” Christiaens said. “She would look them in the eye and touch their brow. When she walked into the room, patients calmed down. She brought in that healing environment with her. That’s holistic nursing right there.”

Christiaens said when the American Nursing Association officially recognized holistic nursing as a specialty in 2006, the designation added credibility and validation to what she had been doing for years.

“I felt hopeful for the future of nursing because the ANA is saying it is important to treat the whole patient.”

Despite staff shortages all over the country that require nurses to undertake heavier workloads, nurses can do little things to build relationships and trust with their patients. But once nurses stop trusting their patients, start ignoring them or treating them like an inconvenience, that can block healing, she said.

“What happens, in my view, is that the patient withdraws and realizes they are not going to be cared for in that environment,” Christiaens said. “People are not automobiles and nurses are not mechanics. I think we need to develop a relationship with our patients.”

Suzy Bramwell, a former student of Christiaens who is now a nurse in Seattle, said she was able to bring to her job a different perspective on nursing because of what she had learned from Christiaens.

“She taught us to be aware of more than just the monitors and the lab results, but to talk to our patients to pick up the non-verbal along with the verbal,” Bramwell said.

Last year, Christiaens was able to secure grant money to take 16 of her students to the annual AHNA conference in Tahoe City, Calif., of which she was the chair. This year, she will take 19 students to the conference in New Hampshire, where students will participate in workshops and classes on holistic nursing practices.

“She really walks the walk and imbues holistic nursing to her students,” Crawford said.

(c) YellowBrix 2008

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