Integrative Healing Arts Program | ReAwakening the Heart
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ReAwakening the Heart:
Caring & Renewal in Nursing Practice

A program to engage the heart and spirit of nurses, designed as a day-long retreat in which nurses can explore and renew their personal connection to nursing practice. We begin with a focus on the essential but often neglected balance between caring for self and caring for others. Through personal discovery and self-reflection exercises, nurses gain insight into their beliefs, dreams and visions while forming community with other nurses.

Nurses are introduced to holistic nursing philosophy, which offers a context for providing relationship-centered care and human caring science, and provides a foundation on which to ground complementary healing modalities. Emphasis is placed on the healing power of self-care as an essential characteristic of the compassionate caregiver.

Interwoven throughout the curriculum are complementary and alternative modalities (CAM), presented with the intention of assisting participants in gaining practical and experiential knowledge in the integration of these sought after skills. The program also offers nurses an understanding of the specific nursing practices that fall under the umbrella terms of holistic, complementary, alternative and integrative healthcare. Nurses receive 7.8 contact hours of continuing education credit.

Our teaching methods are unique and engaging because direct hands-on experience is integral with the program content. Nurses find ReAwakening the Heart rewarding because it provides them with a day of retreat and renewal. Nursing leaders have endorsed it as a valuable program for improving nursing morale and enhancing caring behaviors. Recent research studies indicate educational programs that provide nurses with holistic caring concepts result in improved measurable patient satisfaction indicators. (Dingman, S. et al. Implementing a Caring Model to Improve Patient Satisfaction, Journal of Nursing Administration: December 1999.)

The BirchTree Center has 70 nurse educators throughout the US and Canada trained to present this program in your healthcare organization, nursing school or as a pre-conference at your next professional gathering. Click here for a schedule of ReAwakening the Heart.

“This program is absolutely wonderful! The staff that participated in the program found it to be inspirational and energizing. I would highly recommend it to any organization that wishes to recognize their staff and take them to another level of professional commitment.”

Peggy Reiley, RN, PhD,
Chief Nurse Executive, Scottsdale Healthcare, Scottsdale, AZ