Taruna College New Zealand is a centre for Adult Education offering an exciting range of formal and informal holistic courses and subjects inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner PhD. such as: Waldorf Teacher Education, Biodynamic Organic Agriculture, Anthroposophical Nursing, Art of Health and Coaching and Biography Workshops.

Anthroposophical Nursing

by Jocelyn Freeman

Anthroposophical Medicine is an extension of current medical practice, into the realm of healing. It is based on the observation that the human being is a soul-spiritual being manifesting life in physical processes.
Rudolf Steiner, in collaboration with Dr. Ita Wegman MD., gave insights and methods of working with patients to doctors. He also worked in conjunction with pharmacists to develop new medicines based on homeopathic principles. This work took place in the newly founded Ita Wegman Clinic in Arlesheim, Switzerland 1921. At this clinic a new impulse for nursing also began and the first training was established. Many postgraduate trainings followed in other countries including the 11th in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand from 1995 – 1998.
These countries have their own Anthroposophical Nurses Associations. They are affiliated with the International Nurses Initiative Group as a part of the Medical Section, School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland. This initiative groups meet regularly to keep track of international trends, develop nursing research, co-ordinate training standards and work on themes for international conferences to deepen the work.

The Anthroposophical Nurse is firstly a state-trained nurse, who extends their knowledge of the nature of the human being with the anthroposophical worldview. This view takes account of the humanity as a whole participating in a progressive evolution. It sees individual development through the process of one’s own life story or biography. This biography is ordered through laws of reincarnation and destiny meeting the conditions of the times. Illness and health are seen as meaningful in the course of one’s life. The Nurse works to build a foundation of intellectual and imaginative ideas. Out of this knowledge, insight develops into the way cosmic or spiritual forces play into the natural world and into our own soul and physical makeup. When the nurse awakens to these images effective methods of healing and support arise.  To this foundation specific nursing care skills are practised in a wide range of therapeutic interventions.
Schooled in observation and image building, the nurse approaches their task. The Nurses were given a meditation that works out of two streams of forces: the heart forces of warmth and strength which bring love; the new heart forces of insight and cognition bringing helping care. These combined in goodwill are active in the hands. Out of this one can endeavour to work.

A major task of the nurse is to work with the patients’ moods. In general terms this means creating a calm and secure atmosphere and surroundings. It also means that with the vulnerability that illness brings in terms of fear, despair, loneliness, helplessness and pain, the nurse can stand at the edge of these challenges with the patient. The Nurses own fears and pains need to have been made conscious yet still enable them to serve with compassion. In practical terms the environment of the patient’s physical boundary needs to be made more secure and at peace. This can be done for example by applying oil in light and warming movement to all or parts of the body. The nurse works closely with the anthroposophical doctor giving prescribed medications such as injection courses, yet is challenged through their own research and insight to come to the appropriate external treatment for the patient. Prescribing basic Weleda medicines and education are also important areas of their work.

A central training for the nurse rest on the development of their faculties of observation which awakened through ongoing practice. Plant study is the most enriching and rewarding for the effort. As a relationship is built towards the plant, metal or substance, insight arises as to what is right to use as therapy. This is also true for a study of the organs. The natural realm that inherently carries healing life forces is the plant world. Knowledge of the plant, carried as a thought picture by the nurse when giving medication or carrying out a nursing care is a most helpful attitude toward healing.
Internationally nurses are feeling the pace of change. There is pressure to become more academic and experts in management and advocacy; pharmaceutical and technical skills are basic necessities. As professional status climbs so the nurse moves away from the bedside and hands-on area of care. In amongst this development anthroposophical nursing has a very tangible and renewing part to play.