Nursing diagnosis "altered energy field"

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"Altered energy diagnosis"

Do you support this NANDA diagnosis? Or do you feel that this diagnosis threatens the legitamacy of our profession? Nanda still stands behind it. What are your thoughts?

paphgrl

Another thought after I reread the alter energy field diagnosis. It mentioned that one should not apply TT as much with children and the geriatric population. My question is - what happened when you do? Will they be harm somehow ? I thought TT was harmless even if it does not work.

If a person can be harm if TT is not apply correctly, then I am really cautious about it. How do I know TT won't interact negatively with the current treatment the patient is going through? I mean is this like mixing Western meds and herbs together which can be fatal.

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Specializes in Nursing assistant.

I am not a nurse (CNA) and was wondering what belief system is the source of theraputic touch? It appears to be more belief than science in this sense:

In medicine, drugs, treatments etc are recommended based on clearly measurable results. These results are demostrated in clinical studies, or in historical studies: testing outcomes over time. If TT is more "magical", I am not certain it should be included as an action for certain nursing diagnosis, themselves hard to demostrate in objective ways.

Don't get me wrong, I pray for my Pts, and believe wholeheartidly that it has an impact. Yet even this is not magical, rather, believing in a sovereign God, I am not excercising some power over the patient. What God does is quite apart from me.

Point is, this seems a bit more witch doctor that doctor....

But I may be way off.

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I place this site because it also contains sites that are pro TT.

Of which the list is shockingly shorter. And believe me, the available articles is much longer then he would have one believe.

Grannynurse:balloons:

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Just thinking of wild ideas of how to test this TT thing (in terms of effectiveness).

One possiblity is to have three groups of people. Group A will be patients with highly qualify TT practitioner. Group B will be patients with people who do not know TT but they are taught a fake version of TT where they go through the motion of TT (i.e. putting hands 2-3 inches above skin... etc) but no attempt to modify energy whatsoever. Group C will be patients with no TT (real or fake) practioner. The patients will be randomized into the 3 groups. The researchers will not know who is a real TT and who is a fake. We will need to test a specific claim from TT, say pain management or something.

If all 3 groups comes out about the same, then TT is not effective in this study (it will need to be repeated by other researchers to get more confidence level). One can choose to do the same thing again but with a different TT claim.

If both the real TT and the fake TT came out significantly better, then there is something else going on, probably not energy field related. Maybe just the theraputic alliance has an impact, maybe placebo, maybe whatever... further research to find out what it is.

If only real TT comes out significantly better, then again we need to repeat it with other researchers and we can only conclude for this one condition we are testing. But this will give researchers motivation to test other claims.

If only real TT comes out significantly better, then another study will compare TT with other known treatments of this condition. For example, let's say pain, we can compare it with different meds, biofeedback, hypnosis, imagery techniques, ... etc. This is important because we need to know the effectiveness of TT relative to other options so we can apply the right treatment at the right situation.

Sorry, you suggestion was all ready tried. And was deemed invalid because it was statistically insignificant.

Grannynurse:balloons:

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I am not a nurse (CNA) and was wondering what belief system is the source of theraputic touch? It appears to be more belief than science in this sense:

In medicine, drugs, treatments etc are recommended based on clearly measurable results. These results are demostrated in clinical studies, or in historical studies: testing outcomes over time. If TT is more "magical", I am not certain it should be included as an action for certain nursing diagnosis, themselves hard to demostrate in objective ways.

Don't get me wrong, I pray for my Pts, and believe wholeheartidly that it has an impact. Yet even this is not magical, rather, believing in a sovereign God, I am not excercising some power over the patient. What God does is quite apart from me.

Point is, this seems a bit more witch doctor that doctor....

But I may be way off.

The belief system is that of altered fields of energy. It is believed that the human body is surrounded by a field of energy and disturbances in it can affect a person's sense of well being. It is not magical, nor does it negate one's belief in a higher power. TT is aimed at restoring a balance of the field of energy. This is the simplest explanation I can offer you. If you wish more of an explanation go to the University of Colorado-Denver or New York University websites for a more in-depth explanation.

Grannynurse:balloons:

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thought I'd look for studies. It was hard to find many, these are what I came up with.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of three Therapeutic Touch treatments on the well-being of 20 persons with terminal cancer in palliative care. http://jhn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/3/383

The Surgical Significance of THerapeutic touch: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FSL/is_2_69/ai_53893763

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Of which the list is shockingly shorter. And believe me, the available articles is much longer then he would have one believe.

Grannynurse:balloons:

Ok... then you can place something else that is much longer.

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Sorry, you suggestion was all ready tried. And was deemed invalid because it was statistically insignificant.

Grannynurse:balloons:

What? Please explain a bit more. If it was tried and it was statistically insignificant, how would that deemed it invalid? What was deemed statistically insignificant?

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I am not a nurse (CNA) and was wondering what belief system is the source of theraputic touch? It appears to be more belief than science in this sense:

In medicine, drugs, treatments etc are recommended based on clearly measurable results. These results are demostrated in clinical studies, or in historical studies: testing outcomes over time. If TT is more "magical", I am not certain it should be included as an action for certain nursing diagnosis, themselves hard to demostrate in objective ways.

Don't get me wrong, I pray for my Pts, and believe wholeheartidly that it has an impact. Yet even this is not magical, rather, believing in a sovereign God, I am not excercising some power over the patient. What God does is quite apart from me.

Point is, this seems a bit more witch doctor that doctor....

But I may be way off.

All the energy stuff (there are many different ones and it seemed TT is one of the most vocal ones) is nothing new. I grew up in Asia and the concept is part of our culture. It is in mythology, in martial arts, in the way people think about illness, and in medicine.

If you study Eastern religion or Eatern philophy, this concept (which has many names depending on the culture) is all over. TT seemed to be an American version of a very old Eastern religious/philosophical concept (i.e. trying to take out the religious/philosophical part).

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thought I'd look for studies. It was hard to find many, these are what I came up with.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of three Therapeutic Touch treatments on the well-being of 20 persons with terminal cancer in palliative care. http://jhn.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/3/383

The Surgical Significance of THerapeutic touch: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FSL/is_2_69/ai_53893763

Hey, that is great. I would suggest people who are interested focus on

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FSL/is_2_69/ai_53893763

because we have access to the full article. The other one, all we have is the abstract.

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Specializes in Pediatrics.

Well, I do believe there is an aura of energy around what we see as the physical boundaries of a person that is of a different quality (temp? mass?) than further away. Fits in with a vision of the world under Einstein's Unified Field Theory. But I'm not such a science person really. I've never sensed it in a physical way and couldn't begin to cite things to prove it.

What concerns me more than whether an energy field/aura is bogus is that a NANDA Dx suggests that any average joe, properly trained, can sense and objectively measure it. And, it is commonly done via therapeutic touch, not with an objective instrument. I don't think everyone can sense such a thing with their hands, so I don't think it should be part of nursing.

In general, I wonder how many hospital patients (I know only a subset of nursing clients) knowingly/consensually consent to being diagnosed this way or even receiving nursing care in general- most think they are just getting medical care and don't realize nurses consider themselves to be delivery a different kind of care.

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Specializes in Nursing assistant.
All the energy stuff (there are many different ones and it seemed TT is one of the most vocal ones) is nothing new. I grew up in Asia and the concept is part of our culture. It is in mythology, in martial arts, in the way people think about illness, and in medicine.

If you study Eastern religion or Eatern philophy, this concept (which has many names depending on the culture) is all over. TT seemed to be an American version of a very old Eastern religious/philosophical concept (i.e. trying to take out the religious/philosophical part).

Thanks!

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