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The Connecticut Holistic Health Association prize for academic excellence at the Yale School of Nursing is given to a deserving student demonstrating academic excellence in a holistically oriented research or clinical project of significant social relevance. This annual award was conceived to recognize scholarly endeavors that use a holistic view.
A holistic view is characterized by the idea that the parts are meaningless outside of the whole. Scholarly endeavors in nursing that take a holistic perspective are exemplified by consideration of the person as whole - body, mind and spirit - within a social context. Although nursing can be distinguished from medicine by our holistic perspective, we often find ourselves working within the Western biomedical model that views the systems that make up a person as being essentially independent from one another. However, biomedical approaches to health problems may not be effective for people whose central values, beliefs and behaviors are grounded in non-Western traditions that are thousands of years old.
The research this graduate conducted was a meta-synthesis that explored how mindfulness meditation, and related therapies, affects psychological sequelae in people with cancer. Her research, not simple to conduct, revealed four overarching themes from the literature germane to the role of mindfulness meditation and attitudes of the patient with cancer: 1. reaching out to others; 2. finding a way out of chaos; 3. silence/hiding practice; and 4. courage to go beyond. Her thesis is one of the first studies that attempts to review and analyze mindfulness based meditation in a qualitative and systematic way.
Other indicators of this student's commitment to holistic health care include her exemplary presentation on the uses of complementary and alternative treatments in pediatrics, and her participation in the Traditional Chinese Medicine course which allowed her to acquire a basic understanding of how traditional medicine is utilized in a variety of clinical settings. As part of this course, this graduate traveled to Hong Kong and, through experiential learning, saw the use and effectiveness of holistic non-western approaches in addressing the specific health needs of each individual.
It is with great pleasure that the Yale School of Nursing presents the 2009 Connecticut Holistic Health Association Prize to Michelle Coutts. |
