Abstract

Traditional philosophical tenets concerning ontology, epistemology, and metaphysics are currently being challenged by many disciplines, including nursing. Newman, Sime and Corcoran-Perry have identified three paradigms which describe the ontological beliefs of the discipline of nursing. These three paradigms are: particulate-deterministic, interactive-integrative and unitary-transformative. The naming of the unitary-transformative philosophy mandates a reexamination of nursing's central concepts in light of this perspective. ;Historically, health and health promotion have been considered to be the core of nursing practice . Of primary concern to nursing is the development of cogent, coherent descriptions of health, health promotion, and healing that reflect the beliefs represented by multiple paradigms. There is confusion in extant nursing literature about the nature of health promotion and healing within the discipline. J. Smith's landmark foundational inquiry into the nature of health, while offering definitions of health consistent with the particulate-deterministic and integrative-interactive paradigms, does not integrate the beliefs about the nature of health from the unitary-transformative paradigm. Therefore, this study examines the concepts of health promotion and healing within the paradigmatic perspectives of the discipline of nursing and posits a conceptualization of health, health promotion, and healing within the unitary-transformative paradigm. ;Using a philosophical analysis framework which incorporated Edgerton's methodological process of argumentation by analysis, interpretation, and logical stricture and Sarter's process of theoretical justification, conceptualizations of health, health promotion, and healing consistent with nursing's paradigmatic perspectives were developed. J. Smith and nursing theory provided the basis for development of the particulate-deterministic and interactive-integrative conceptualizations of health promotion and healing. Health promotion and healing consistent with determinism may be described as multi-leveled prevention and restoration of functioning with goals of homeostasis, system stability, and self-care. Integrative health promotion and healing may be viewed as system adaptation, coping, and system change and growth which contributes to an evolving personal definition of health and well-being. ;Literature from nursing, human sciences, medicine, and health education was examined to illuminate the meaning of unitary-transformative health, health promotion, and healing. This model posits that health, health promotion, and healing within the unitary-transformative paradigm are conceptually distinct from disease and disease prevention although are experienced as unitive within human becoming. Disease is considered to be a physiological expression of reality whose meaning is derived through public and personal evaluation. Health is the process of transcendent human becoming; a dance of rhythmic patterning which is a creative expression of human emergence. Health promotion and healing is the dance with universal consciousness occurring through a rhythmical movement between the a life of action and contemplation