ABSTRACT
A historical analysis of primary and secondary nursing literature on holism in American nursing since the late nineteenth century revealed that holistic notions which addressed the integrity and wholeness of human beings were attractive to nurses as a means of articulating their role and expertise. However, these notions also reflected nurses’ ambivalence about their expertise. As a predominantly female profession, nurses struggled to define and control their specific contribution to patient care. Holistic notions of care, such as comprehensive care, patient-centred care or even total care were not merely constructs to define the professional status of nursing, but also representations of the complex and often complicated position that nursing assumed in the health care system.1
