"Nursing has long been concerned about this over-accent on sickness care. Many have moved out into the community, away from hospital, seeking to find ways to prevent people from becoming ill. They have frequently expressed the feeling that perhaps a third of the patients they have seen in hospitals over the past fifty years would not have become that sick if someone out in the community had been sensitive to their cries for help. Many of these early symptoms at that point would have been reversible."
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"... and He sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick." Luke 9:2 |
Nurses were instrumental in convincing Granger Westberg that the field of preventive medicine needed to include the physician and other professionals, as well as the parish clergy, to see people on a regular basis and often in informal settings. The ideal was to provide an inter-disciplinary approach to wellness care in a faith community.
Today, many nurses work in parishes in areas of prevention and wellness. It is the role of the nurse to involve people in their own health care and in the care of their neighbor.
In his book Granger Westberg goes on to state,
"For me, nurses are a national treasure, a reservoir, a pearl of great price which has been hidden in the field." Nurses have been pleading with the medical profession for 40 years to become more oriented to preventive medicine, to teach people how to stay well. Now is their chance to reach thousands of people in the informal setting of an institution, which is ready to rethink its role in motivating people to healthy living. Nurses go into the homes ministering to the people, touching them and communicating with them. Rev. Westberg states, "Without the touch the talking does not carry much power."
The development of these statements was completed at the Fourteenth Annual Westberg Symposium, "Weaving Parish Nursing into the New Millennium" coordinated by Ann Solari-Twadell RN, MPA, MSN, director of the International Parish Nurse Resource Center, Advocate Heath Care.
