A Closer Look at Kolcaba's Conceptual Framework

“I hope that nurses will collectively move boldly into a future where knowing about, and doing something about human needs for comfort and relief from pain are clearly within nurses’ realm.” – P. Chinn (Kolcaba, 2003, p.19)

Providing comfort is definitely within the nurses’ realm today. Nurses are the ones in direct contact with their patients, providing relief from certain discomforts, continuously assessing, monitoring and providing care that will ensure the client is at ease. According to Kolcaba, “Comfort is the desirable state that nurses would want for their patients.” 

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Dr. K on Facebook!

Right, you read that right, Dr. Kolcaba is on Facebook! We tried to contact her regarding the theory and good thing she promptly responded.

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You may use this quick link to her Facebook's Comfort Theory in Health Care page.

Nurse's Role

Several nurse theorists have already defined nursing. All of their theories has been tried and tested and it has affected our utilization of nursing services or the standards of care we give to our patients:

“…what nursing has to do…is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.” – Florence Nightingale

“The care circle explains the role of nurses, and focused on performing that noble task of nurturing the patients, meaning the component of this model is the “motherly” care provided by nurses, which may include limited to provision of comfort measures, provision of patient teaching activities and helping the patient meet their needs where help is needed.” – Lydia Hall

All of these can be summed up in one word…COMFORT. Comfort is a concept that has a strong association with nursing. The term itself represented a relaxed, healthy, peaceful, and individualized condition. Nurses traditionally provide comfort to patients and their families through interventions that can be called comfort measures. The intentional comforting actions of nurses strengthen patients and their families. When patients and families are strengthened by actions of health care personnel (nurses), they can better engage in health seeking behaviors. 

Reference: 

Kolcaba, K. (2010, May 17). The comfort line: Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from The Comfort Line website: http://www.thecomfortline.com/FAQ.html

Comfort Theory: An Overview

In the light of current nursing shortage, health care system should find the means to address this problem in order to continue achieving the goal, which is to provide the optimum level of health of a person or client. 

During the 1900’s, comfort is considered the goal of both nursing and medicine because it is believed that comfort will lead to recovery. Comfort is a complex term and titled as one of the distinguishing characteristic of the nursing profession yet, it has never been conceptualized, studied and researched in the field.

In this part of the blog, you will notice that we include certain terms about the theory in which you may get confused of but don’t worry because each will be discussed further as you read the other posts in this blog.

Pioneering the work on theory of comfort in nursing is Dr. Katharine C. Kolcaba PhD, RN, an American nursing scholar, a clinical nurse specialist who attained several scholastic awards and achievements. With her collated readings, knowledge, experiences and researches... she was able to provide a holistic definition for comfort not only in nursing but for the whole health care team.

The theory of comfort is one of the many middle range nursing theory because it is focused on a limited dimension of the reality of nursing. It is formulated to provide guidance for everyday practice and scholarly research rooted in the discipline of nursing.