Nurses' Comfort
I became interested in the comfort of nurses while writing my book (Kolcaba, 2003). “I believe
that the holistic comfort of nurses is an important factor in retention, absenteeism, morale, and
recruitment. …Moreover, the realities associated with hospital environments are the essence of
the science of nursing administration”. So, in 2005, I was asked to present two related topics: at
my first visit we focused on patient and family comfort and at the second visit, we focused on
nurses’ comfort.
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This was also the era when hospitals were applying for Magnet Status for the first time and in
those early days, a conceptual model was required. Many institutions picked Comfort Theory
because it is intuitive, easy to apply, and easy to design and test interventions which was
another requirement to achieve Magnet Status. In this environment, I began an extensive
review of what nurses were saying they needed in order to have a supportive environment for
their practice. Most of the literature was from the American Journal of Nursing monthly issues
which discussed the environmental improvements that would support Magnet designation. I
was able to discern the essential attributes of nurse comfort in the four contexts of experience
and they are included in this section of my website. You have my permission to cite this website
if you are doing any research on this topic.
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Below are the links to some of the work done during in the first decade of 2000.