ABSTRACT
The traditional approach to patient experience in nursing practice has focused on viewing human experience entirely from the patient’s perspective. This approach is questioned in that patients, nurses, and other healthcare team members are all human beings engaged in human experience with holism as a core consideration. Holism is a longstanding philosophy of human experience, having been upheld since the 1700s. In this chapter, the concept of holism and all that it entails is explored from the perspective of conceptualizing the individual as part of a larger environmental context that shapes lived experiences in the nursing care setting with an emphasis on the integration of social, psychological, cultural, biological, as well as spiritual perspectives in each human interaction. While the notion of holism has long been acknowledged, its application in nursing calls for a careful rethinking of the philosophy with the aim of expanding it to incorporate the larger human experience as a model of each patient’s experience with the healthcare system and environment that includes all members of the health team and their human experiences as well.
