Empowerment as a source of healing: redefining the art of nursing management

Empowerment amounts to a social process of recognizing, promoting and enhancing staff nurse abilities to meet self needs, solve their own problems and mobilize the necessary resources to gain mastery over their own professional lives. Healing, to be made whole, is a process of getting in touch with that which is impeding our realization of wholeness. Empowerment as a source of organizational healing conveys the message that in order to realize wholeness, nurses are dependent upon personal and organizational resources. As nurses learn multiple ways to interact with the work environment, they find the path to a wholeness that incorporates physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of themselves. As the value of wholeness is realized individually, interactions with the environment spontaneously manifest these attributes and the message permeates the nursing community. As the nursing community is empowered, it is increasingly able to empower the individual. This expanding energy can result in a synergistic pattern that brings phenomena together, and interrelates them, creating a new and greater whole from the disparate, seemingly conflicting parts. When nurses as individuals and groups are able and willing (empowered) to invest energy to that which impacts their lives so that they can move toward wholeness (heal), positive energy exponentially intensifies and permeates the environment to envelop all.