Margaret Newman: Health as Expanding Consciousness

1. Margaret Newman:Health as Expanding Consciousness Aleida Drozdowicz Elizabeth Kinchen Foundations in Holistic Nursing I NGR 6168 Dr. Bernadette Lange

2. What was the driving force? • Father involved in philosophy • Learned there were different ways to look at any one situation. • Mother’s illness with ALS • Became interested in Nursing as a profession • 2 key realizations • Disease/illness does not define a person • Time, movement and space interrelated with health and quality of relationships. • Professor Marie Buckley • Encouraged independent Nursing Practice • Professor Dorothy Hocker • Power of Nursing Presence • Martha Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings • Enhanced ability to see whole

3. Stage of Knowledge Development • Doctoral at NYU with Martha Rogers • Study movement, time and space as parameters of health; positivist scientific paradigm. • Theoretical insights evolved as she continued to learn Martha Rogers ‘ work. • Health and illness are manifestations of a greater whole • Person, family and environment are interconnected as a unitary whole. • 1978 Toward a Theory of Health - presentation at Nursing Theory Conference In New York City. • 1984 Nurse Theorist at University of Minnesota. • Pattern Recognition Nursing Process - Collaboration with Richard Cowling, Case Western, and Jim Vail, Army Nurse Corps. • Published 2 editions of “Health as Expanding Consciousness” • Published “Transforming Presence: The Difference that Nursing Makes”; “Giving Voice to What we Know: Margaret Newman’s Theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness in Nursing Practice, Research and Education”.

4. Health Movement • 1970 Women’s Health Movement • Beginning of a power shift in women’s health • Women wanted control of their own bodies • 1980 Community Mental Health Movement • Started in 1900’s • Aimed at improving government mental health services • Insanity Defense • People with mental problems could stay in their normal communities with little hospitalizations

5. Economic/Political Influences on Health • Government concerned with rising costs of healthcare because of Medicare and Medicaid • Proposal for a health cost strategy to slow inflation rates were first made in 1970. • Expand health maintenance organization (HMO’s) • Regulate hospital physician fees with federal controls if a state failed to act; • Higher cost sharing in private insurance • 1974 American Congressional Registration, National Health Planning and resources development Act • No equal access to affordable healthcare • Use of Federal Funds in the healthcare system added to increase in inflation rates • No uniform methods of healthcare • Unequal distribution of healthcare facilities • Lack of basic knowledge regarding personal healthcare • Years later found health planning was ineffective at constraining how much money was spent leading to rise in health costs.

6. Metaparadigm of Nursing • Newman moves from the ‘Instrumentalist’ paradigm to a Relational one • Based on partnership between nurse and nursed • Goal is to facilitate a higher level of consciousness through recognition of life patterning • Newman advocates a break with medical science and its mechanist paradigm

7. Philosophical Underpinnings • Evolving Consciousness as a Unitary concept • Health encompasses and goes beyond disease • Life is the Process of Expanding Consciousness • Consciousness is the informational capacity of the system • Anything Explicate is a manifestation of the Implicate Order

8. Theoretical Underpinnings • Martha Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings • Itzhak Bentov’s Life as the Expansion of Consciousness • Bohm’s Theory of Implicate Order • Prigogine’s Theory of Dissipative Structures • Young’s Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness

9. Basic Assumptions • Health encompasses conditions known as disease • Disease can be considered a manifestation of the underlying pattern of the person • The pattern of the person that manifests itself as disease is primary and exists prior to structural or functional changes • Health is the expansion of consciousness

10. Expanding the Body of Nursing Knowledge

11. Snapshot of Literature Review Findings

12. References Newman, M. A. 2008. Transforming presence: the difference that nursing makes. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company Newman, M. A. 1997. Evolution of the theory of health as expanding consciousness. Nursing Science Quarterly10(1): 22-25. Smith, M. E. (2010). Nursing theories and nursing practice, 3rd ed. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Company.

13. References • Strange, F. 1994. Book Review. Health as Expanding Consciousness 2nd ed. By Margaret A. Newman. New York: National League for Nursing Press. • Young, C. K. (n.d.). https://www.ed2go.com/Classroom/Lessons.aspx. Retrieved June 23, 2011, from https://www.ed2go.com/: https://www.ed2go.com/Classroom/Lessons.aspx?lesson=1&chpt=4&classroom=Wzwx8cQvx4OuZnoUSU66w%2FJc6LIMTq74GsDI%2FyHd5aY%3D