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Anthroposophical Nursing
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 Forum as a part of the Medical Section, School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. This forum meets 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 a registered nurse who extends her knowledge of the nature of the human being with the anthroposophical worldview. This view takes account of 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 a human being’s soul and physical makeup. When the nurse awakens to these images, effective methods of healing and support arise.
From this foundation, specific nursing care skills are practised in a wide range of therapeutic interventions.
Schooled in observation and image building, the nurse approaches her task. Nurses are given a meditation that works out of two streams of forces: the heart forces of warmth and strength bring love; and the new heart forces of insight and cognition bring helping care. These forces 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 nurse's 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.
In a modern sense the four elements of warmth, fire, air and water are studied, for these can be conceived as realities playing into our bodily nature. In health these are in a state of balance, each in a different way for the different organs, whereas in illness or disease the equilibrium has been lost and needs to be restored. We seek to recreate it with the use of corresponding cold, warm, dry/light and moist treatments which take the forms as:
- Compresses using herb teas (decoctions, infusions) or lotions
- Poultices, i.e. substances such as ginger, mustard and lemon.
- Rhythmical Body Oiling.
- Constitutional remedies such as metals in the form of ointments, and organ massages or ointment cloths.
- Hydrotherapy in the form of steam inhalations, baths as in finely dispersed oil added to a bath slightly lower than body temperature, rising temperature baths, or foot and arm baths, substance baths using teas or lotions or nutritional baths.
A central training for the nurse rests on the development of their faculties of observation which awaken through ongoing practice. Plant study is 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 nature of plants inherently carries healing life forces is the plant world. The nurse is assisted in the work when an active picture of the plant and its healing properties is pictured.
Internationally, nurses are feeling the pace of change. There is pressure to become more academic, and expert in management and advocacy; pharmaceutical and technical skills are basic necessities. As nurses are considered more and more as a professional, so the nurses moves away from the bedside and hands-on care is done by the lesser qualified health workers. In amongst this development anthroposophical nursing has a very tangible and renewing part to play.
Jocelyn Freeman. |
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