Creating a Healing Environment: The Role of Comfort in Nursing Care.

Abstract

Comfort has increasingly been employed as a key goal in a variety of contexts, including health, justice, the economy, and the environment. Comfort has long been a primary concern in nursing, and it is especially significant in defining the nature of nursing knowledge and the profession. The goal of analysis this is to comprehend the various principles of comfort and to investigate the linked nursing features required for successful patient care. Patient-centered care is a critical indicator of health care quality, and comfort is essential for the patient experience. Katherine Kolcaba introduced the philosophy of comfort in nursing care in the 1990s, when she defined comfort as having three components: relief, ease, and transcendence. Because comfort is a core patient aim and central to the patient experience, maximizing comfort is a universal goal for health care. The design is a concept analysis. Walker and Avant analysis approach was employed to investigate the concept of comfort. Various internet databases were searched extensively for the term "comfort." A total of 31 papers were analyzed to find comfort attribute common themes. The results of analysis showed that disease process, self-esteem, positioning, approach of staff, and hospital life are considered antecedents of comfort; meanwhile, consequences of comfort include symptom relief, reduced suffering, an increased sense of control, and emotions of belonging. Tools that measure the comfort concept can be subjective or objective. In conclusion, nurses could apply many theories such as Kolcaba's Comfort Theory to guide their practice.