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.