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1
Kolcaba’s Comfort Theory
Personal Background
2
Comfort Theory and Care
Comfort Care is a nursing art that entails the process of comforting actions
performed by a nurse for a patient. According to comfort theory, patients
experience comfort needs in stressful health care situations. Patients and their
families/support groups meet some needs but other needs remain unmet. These
needs can be identified by a nurse who then implements comfort measures to meet
the needs. Enhanced comfort readies the patient for subsequent healthy behaviors
or a peaceful death. Comfort measures can provide relief, help ease a distress or
help support the patient to transcend the experience or condition.
Physical-bodily Opioid for postop pain Elevate leg for edema Coaching for labor pain
sensations
and physiologic
problems
Psychospiritual- Coaching and Chaplain, deep Support for giving
internal encouraging- breathing, guided control and feeling safe.
awareness, self-esteem, imagery
spiritual relationship
3
Sociocultural- Information and Interpreter, family Religious practice or
interpersonal, education visiting and presence rituals
family and society
Kolcaba explains that comfort has long been associated with nursing and
typically has been a leading theme. Of course greater comfort is good for the
patient and assists with enhancing the patient’s well being, but nurses’
efforts to extend comfort to patients carry implications beyond an immediate
improvement in the patient’s outlook and that of his family. “When patients
and families are strengthened by actions of health care personnel (nurses!),
they can better engage in health seeking behaviors”.
The second facet of the theory focuses on health Seeking Behaviors (HSB’s).
HSBs can be internal (healing), external (health related activities), or even a
peaceful death among terminal patients. HSBs of specific groups of any size-
whether large of small- are positively related to the third aspect of kolcaba’s
theory of comfort, Institutional Integrity (lnl).
This third aspect of kolcaba’s theory of comfort was newly defined in 2007
and is “defined as the values, financial stability, and wholeness of health care
organizations at local, regional, state, and national levels” (kolcaba, 2008).
All Patients
Distress: 4 Contexts
Comfort Interventions
4
Patient Outcomes
Bibliography
Carlson, K.L., Broome, M. & Vessey, J.A. (2000). Using distraction to reduce reported
pain, fear and
behavioral distress in children and adolescents: A Multisite Study. JSPN, 5(2):75-85.
Morse, J. & Proctor, A. (1998). Maintaining patient endurance: the comfort work of
trauma nurses.
Kolcaba, K. Y. (1995). The art of comfort care. Image: Journal of Nursing Scholarship,
27(4):287-289
Kolcaba, K., Schirm, V., & Steiner, R. (2006). Effects of hand massage on comfort of
nursing home
residents. Geriatric Nursing, 27(2): 85-91.
Kolcaba, K., Tilton, C., & Drouin, C. (2006). Comfort theory: A unifying framework to
enhance the
practice environment. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 36(11): 538-543.