Comfort care is presently taught through discussion, role
modeling, and care plans in a baccalaureate nursing course in
northeast Ohio. Sophomore students are taught how to assess
holistic comfort, along with other outcomes such as safety, activity,
and nutrition. Later, in a theory-based gerontology course, Junior
students learn the theory of comfort and how to apply it to elderly
patients. Students write one comfort care plan a week for 4 weeks;
the first is ungraded because the students are learning a new method
and they require instructor feedback about interactions between the
contexts of comfort, what interventions count as comfort measures,
how to identify intervening variables, and how to think about and
plan for health seeking behaviors with their patients. After their
practice care plan, and with appropriate feedback, students are “off
and running” with their own versions of this nursing art.
At the end of the course, students are told that, although the
theory of comfort is not explicit in other courses, comfort care is
applicable to any nursing situation. Because patients give
considerable positive feedback about comfort care, students find it
very satisfying and often continue to use it intuitively through the
remainder of their education and into professional practice.
The extent to which students identify with principles of comfort
care are exemplified in the following poem written by a student
after becoming accustomed to the care plan.