to me, it's the ultimate measure of desperation on the part of nurses to develop independence from physicians. that it has been turned into a "science" demeans the nursing profession terribly!
while there can be certainly a psychological/placebo effect, the seriousness with which even some phd's in nursing believe in literal truth of therapeutic touch simply amazes me.
it's witchcraft. sheer absolute nonsense in its highest refined form. the techniques are quite laughable, and have no place in medicine, any more than folk remedies supplied by witch doctors.
yet at virtually every major university, there are ladies with phd's running around who literally believe they've developed these powers in their hands. that they can "ruffle" and "realign" forces.
to many, this is the holy grail of nursing. to me, it's delusionary.
these discussions make me reflect on spiritual issues and how they would relate to my practice. as an agnostic and skeptic, i don't favor the nurse initiating any faith based practice to a patient. i feel that no patient should feel pressure from a nurse with a spiritual agenda. you've got someone who is a pinned down and trapped audience. the nurse's personal need to inject their faith based practices on patients should merit no consideration.
I think you may have gotten to the heart of the matter here, traumahawk99. I've been reading this thread regularly but not posting much because I am not sure exactly what to say. As an agnostic and skeptic myself, I find myself sometimes hesitant to get too involved in discussions of the spirtitual aspects of nursing practice. Religious people are not always tolerant of those who practice no organized religion and/or "don't believe in the same god."
I try to respect the faith-based beliefs of others, but believe they should be clearly labeled as being faith-based and not confused with science. That's why I am most comfortable with subjects such as TT and prayer being included into a nursing curriculum as part of a discussion of faith-based interventions that might be appropriate for some patients (and nurses), but not for others.
Faith-based practices pose special challenges for scientists and for society as a whole as we face issues regarding practice, research, and education. How do we incorporate an exploration of them without causing too many problems and conflicts? That may be the real question.
Thanks for starting a thread that has helped me to clarify my thinking a bit.
this does beg the question: if a nurse and a patient both voluntarily want to pray or use TT, do they have the right as consenting adults? yes, absolutely!
the crux of the matter is how we classify TT. if TT had clear scientific evidence supporting it, i would have no question about its inclusion into nursing practice. i classify it as a faith based activity because of the lack of this evidence.
so here i am mr. agnostic-determinist. if a patient that depended on me sincerely asked me to pray with them would i do it? yes, if it made them feel better, i'd put on an acadamy award performance. does that make me a hypocrite? yes! :).
Ah, I see now. You are using the quantum physics stuff to suggest that the human body is a SPIRITUAL i.e. energy machine as well as a physical machine.
I agree.
I might not be able to "see" the energy behind prayer, but I know it works. AND MY UNDERSTANDING OF PRAYER LIES SQUARELY OPPOSED TO YOUR IDEAS ABOUT TT.
Both are spiritual energy fields. Mine is the right understanding of such, yours is wrong. And I'm perfectly entitled to that viewpoint. You disagree? Prove it.
And there's the problem. And that being the problem, I'll repeat my question: why should the body of nursing knowledge weigh into a spiritual debate, on any side?
How can nursing weigh in on such an issue without creating divisions among not only our allied health peers, but amongst ourselves?
Spiritual discussions have no place in a science based dictum. That's not to discredit the spiritual, of which I'm a high believer. That's not to say that 'modern medicine ignores the spiritual'. It IS to say that our profession does not need, nor can it rationally devise, a body of knowledge that uniformly incorporates such thought. That spirituality is as diverse as our religious beliefs. In fact, they ARE our religious beliefs.
And that is simply different from a uniform science, which can be taught based upon fact; not faith.
I trust our individual practitioners to bring their OWN spirituality to the table . . . and the bedside . . . without interference from a nursing perspective that simply cannot provide uniformity to that individuality, no matter how hard it tries or who it may offend in the process.
TT as a principle doesn't offend me. But, because I not only DON'T believe in it, but believe in a mutually exclusive viewpoint, TT as a part of nursing's body of knowledge is offensive in its elitism.
And only someone in an Ivory Tower can't see that. (That's not a comment directed at those that believe in TT, but to our so-called nursing leadership. They are elitist to the point of exclusion and so, divisive in their viewpoints; and then they wonder why nursing has no unified voice.)
TT as part of nursing knowlege is but a symptom of a larger problem: academic elitism. It's result in my case, and in the case of ever growing numbers, is the sub-total dismissal of the Ivory Tower. They simply aren't relevant to my practice, by THEIR very own choice.
~faith,
Timothy.
excellent points. dude, that was a very good post!
What does modern medicine have to do w/ the science of cell phones? In fact, every hospital I've worked in has a stated policy that the electro-magnetic field produced by cell phones can affect critical machinery, and is therefore not allowed in clinical areas. I would have to state, for the record, then, that modern medicine does understand the functioning of a cell phone. This statement is pure hyperbole.
But, there are many things that modern science cannot fully explain, even as it accepts as 'valid'. Try how helicopters fly.
Try the relationship between smoking and cancer. There is no proof that smoking causes cancer - or heart disease - at all. There is a high enough correlation, however, to state w/ some certainty that there IS a relationship.
And mammograms, cell phones, helicopters et all prove their efficacy because they can be SHOWN to work.
I'm not against the idea of TT. Personally, I believe in prayer. But let's be clear here: Just like prayer, TT is a spiritual belief in that it requires FAITH. I'm a very religious person. I would not choose to try to debunk anybody's spiritual beliefs.
But, spiritual beliefs are not science. If we want to be taken seriously in a scientific field, we should endeavor to be embrace a scientific body of knowledge.
For nursing to embrace a particular spiritual culture is a form of elitism. It not only detracts from our ability to represent ourselves credibly to our allied health peers, but, more importantly, to ourselves.
TT should not be taught in nursing programs any more than the power of a good Judeo-Christian prayer should be taught. That's not to say that nurses cannot believe in either and/or both. It's just that that body of knowledge should be an individual's adjunct to nursing's body of knowledge, and not a part of it.
~faith,
Timothy.
Let me just say, I generally enjoy your posts (I'm thinking the homophobic thread, and the libertarian thoughts in particular).
I have a couple of problems with what you are saying here. You seem to think that TT belongs to nursing. It does not, though it was developed there by Krieger PhD, RN. It was based on what she learned from Dora Kuntz, who was not a nurse. TT, and the many, many other forms of energy based techniques are embraced by OTHER allied health professionals and scientists. No need to be embarassed for nursing here. Examples abound for energy based work by others. Let's look at Julie Motz who was invited to work with Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Colombia Presbyterian Med Ctr in Manhatten in the OR documented in her book, "Hands of Life".
Rosalyn Bruyere, a former engineer, a well known healer, was involved in an eight year research program on the human electromagnetic field conducted at UCLA. Barbara Brennan, a former NASA astrophysicist, has trained many in her school, and is very well known. I took classes with a nurse who was attracted to a hospital in York, Maine because they offered these techniques to their patients. She specifically mentioned their program of offering Reiki before cardiac surgery. Surely, some MD's would have to have approved that, don't you think?
Also, I'm having a problem with your assumption that TT is faith based, like it's a cult or religion. Who told you that? It is based on very real physics, but not Newtonian. Newtonian physics looks at the world, including us, and sees solid objects, and that all physical reactions are seen to have a physical cause. This physics did not take into account that the experimenter, himself could effect the results in physical as well as psychological experiments as physicists have now documented. Then Field Theory came along in the early 19th century. A field being a condition in space that has the potential of producing a force. According to Brennan, we are just now "beginning to admit that we ourselves are composed of fields".
Well, we certainly are not solid, as there is space between those atoms and molecules we are composed of and they are vibrating. Einstein and relativity theory proved space is not three dimensional. Time is not a separate entitiy, and it is not linear, but rather relative. This is not explained by Newtonian Physics. And then, there is quantam physics, and the experiment proving that light can be both a particle and a wave. And they can be both at the same time. And then there is the holographic nature of the universe. Are you following me? Pretty crazy, is it not? Energy work has to do with all of this stuff and more. Dr. Karl Pribam, a Stanford neuropychologist proved that the brain's deep structure was holographic in nature. "He states that the brain employs a holographic process to abstract from a holographic domain that transcends time and space." What these healers, and scientists are saying is what eastern thought proposed that we are parts of a whole, we are not separate although we think we are. Brennan suggests that " we can enter into a holistic state of being, become the whole, and tap into the creative powers of the universe..."
Does this work on babies who have no possibility of any faith involved, or on pets? Yes, it does. Is there a spiritual aspect, yes in that we are as someone (Ram Dass?) has said, "spiritual beings having a physical experience", composed of energy, and not solid. Am I praying while I am healing? No, I am not. I am working with energy according to my understanding of it.
Now other healers may disagree, and I am sure they could do a far better job of explaining than I can. Believe me, this is why I don't spend time theorizing, but rather just doing it in the frameworks for the modalities that I have trained in.
And BTW, I was taught in the business skills component of my polarity training that in the 1999 edition of the AMA's Physician's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Code Book, that there is a code for EFD, energy field dysfunction.
Again, should TT be taught in nursing school? Well, we are involved in caring for people while they are healing or while they are ill. We can choose to help them with this type of work. I think it should be offered as an elective.
I attend one of the "ivies" and we are all given a quick -and I mean 15 minute- reiki demonstration. There is also a complimentary and alternative medicine elective offered to interested graduates and undergraduates. I think there is most certainly a place for this type of course. Even if you are vehemently against the idea that TT, reiki, or maybe even witchcraft could possible work, there are many practitioners out there, and many pt's who take advantage of these options on a regular basis. Wouldn't it be nice to have some idea what it is these practitioners do and what our pt's beliefs and cultural experiences are so that we might better care for them? I think my school has it right. Offer it as an elective. I find it interesting how strongly people feel about this issue both for and against. I think it's great.
Based on the marketplace alone, I agree. When I was a home health nurse in Philly, my agency paid for me to take classes in TT and herbal medicine.
Patients take herbs at home, and we needed to know how they worked, and possible drug interactions. I used TT and Reiki as part of my assessment in home care with my patient's permission, to help me understand what was going on with them, not a major treatment, just a quick once over. In case anyone thinks this is hallucinatory on my part, let me just say this, in my TT class, composed of all women, there were no physical secrets. If anyone was menstruating, we were all aware of it once we went thru their energy fields.
I attend one of the "ivies" and we are all given a quick -and I mean 15 minute- reiki demonstration. There is also a complimentary and alternative medicine elective offered to interested graduates and undergraduates. I think there is most certainly a place for this type of course. Even if you are vehemently against the idea that TT, reiki, or maybe even witchcraft could possible work, there are many practitioners out there, and many pt's who take advantage of these options on a regular basis. Wouldn't it be nice to have some idea what it is these practitioners do and what our pt's beliefs and cultural experiences are so that we might better care for them? I think my school has it right. Offer it as an elective. I find it interesting how strongly people feel about this issue both for and against. I think it's great.
another very good point. certainly it would pay to be aware of common alternative medicine practices.
in the elective class, was there instruction by someone who truly believed in these techniques, or was it a study of the phenomena?
working your way from any sort of physics to the belief that i can use my forces to align your forces is a huge jump without any clear evidence. how can it be called anything except faith?
it would be nice to believe that we can spread energy between ourselves and our patients, but that doesn't make it so.
just because people seek out alternate treatments doesn't make them valid.
i've seen several people go to mexico for alternative cancer treatments. all of them died .
One more comment about the JAMA debacle. Three years prior, in 1995, "real" researchers, in a far more rigorious study, found that untrained college students could sense the subtle energy of an investigator's hand 66 percent of the time. In followup studies, researchers found that 58 percent of the students could tell when an investigator was merely gazing at the back of their head.
Also, I'm having a problem with your assumption that TT is faith based, like it's a cult or religion. Who told you that?
I might be speaking incorrectly for Timothy, but the way I read his use of 'faith-based,' I don't think he's likening it to a religion necessarily. If you have a therapy that is based very loosely on science, which is considered to be experiential and is not amenable to study with RCT's, then practitioners and patients are relying on their faith in that therapy when they utilize it. I don't think he meant that a bunch of Catholics and Presbyterians are going to be converting to Therapeutic Touchicism.
Ah, I see now. You are using the quantum physics stuff to suggest that the human body is a SPIRITUAL i.e. energy machine as well as a physical machine.
Everything is energy, therefore there "should" not be so much confusion about "energy-based" practices. You can make anything you want spiritual if you wish. The World's Cup in soccer is coming up while I will be in Germany. I'm sure I'll feel the "spiritual energy" while I'm there, LOL!
I might not be able to "see" the energy behind prayer, but I know it works. AND MY UNDERSTANDING OF PRAYER LIES SQUARELY OPPOSED TO YOUR IDEAS ABOUT TT.
"How" do you know what my ideas about understanding prayer are, since I haven't discussed it?
And there's the problem. And that being the problem, I'll repeat my question: why should the body of nursing knowledge weigh into a spiritual debate, on any side?
Someone go look on the TT site and see if the word "spiritual" is on the website.
TT as a principle doesn't offend me. But, because I not only DON'T believe in it, but believe in a mutually exclusive viewpoint, TT as a part of nursing's body of knowledge is offensive in its elitism.
Where are coming up with all this "elitism" stuff?
if medicine is a "faith based practice", then why do we need to use drugs, surgery, etc?
Because they are the modern version of a shaman's practice. Patients have faith that they will work. There are many instances of a drug working because the patient thought it would, only to hear that new research shows that it really doesn't do what was thought...and the patient, upon hearing this, dies.
How about the sham knee surgeries? Those receiving sham surgery did as well as those who actually had the surgery. In fact, they usually had better function than those who had the real operation. Faith in action.
Faith or belief in something does help. If you don't believe in something, you will not be open to experiencing it. That means only that you will have less to offer a patient. Your toolbox will be short a few tools.
And faith may not always have to be present. Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., psychologist and medical anthropologist, was made aware of this when he told a voodoo priest that he didn't believe in the stuff. When he went back to the states, the priest and another anthropologist did a ceremony and called him (collect) to see how he was doing "at the moment." He was not doing good and a trip to the ER showed that no cause could be found for his sudden illness.
I've studied shamanism before and will be studying with Alberto this summer as well as with some Huichol Indian shamans. The reason..the stuff works. While some may call it mumbo jumbo, it's just PNI and it's amazing ancient people had a handle on it way before modern medicine.
.
llg, PhD, RN
13,469 Posts
I think you may have gotten to the heart of the matter here, traumahawk99. I've been reading this thread regularly but not posting much because I am not sure exactly what to say. As an agnostic and skeptic myself, I find myself sometimes hesitant to get too involved in discussions of the spirtitual aspects of nursing practice. Religious people are not always tolerant of those who practice no organized religion and/or "don't believe in the same god."
I try to respect the faith-based beliefs of others, but believe they should be clearly labeled as being faith-based and not confused with science. That's why I am most comfortable with subjects such as TT and prayer being included into a nursing curriculum as part of a discussion of faith-based interventions that might be appropriate for some patients (and nurses), but not for others.
Faith-based practices pose special challenges for scientists and for society as a whole as we face issues regarding practice, research, and education. How do we incorporate an exploration of them without causing too many problems and conflicts? That may be the real question.
Thanks for starting a thread that has helped me to clarify my thinking a bit.
llg