a process of becoming more of oneself, of
finding greater meaning in life, and of reach-
ing new dimensions of connectedness with
other people and the world” (1). HEC nurses
attend to that process.References
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Quadrennial Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark. June 11, 2001.studied the process of HEC nursing with families
with a child with special health-care needs. She
found that the nursing partnership was very impor-
tant to the families as they struggled to make sense
of their experiences and tried to discern how to get
on with their lives. The evolving pattern of these
families included the social and political forces
within the educational, disabilities support, and
health care systems, as well as community patterns
of caring, prejudice, and racism (Falkenstern, 2003).
The pattern of the community is visible in the
stories of individuals and families. Nurses can play
an important role in engaging communities in dia-
logue as these stories are shared and reflected upon.
More work needs to be done on methods of engag-
ing communities in dialogue about what is mean-
ingful. For example, if an HEC nurse were to take
on the task of engaging her or his country’s nurses
in a dialogue about what is meaningful in their
practice, expanding consciousness would be mani-
fest as the profession reorganizes at a higher level of
functioning. In the process, the public would no
doubt experience an expanded sense of health.
Margaret Newman’s theory of Health as
Expanding Consciousness (HEC) calls nurses
to focus on that which is meaningful in their
practice and in the lives of their patients. It is
a philosophy ofbeing withrather than doing
for.The HEC nurse brings to the patient en-
counter all that she or he has learned in
school and in practice, but begins by attend-
ing to the patient’s definition of health and
seeing it in the context of the patient’s ex-
pression of meaningful relationships and
events. The focus is not on predetermined
outcomes mandated by the health system or
on fixingthe patient, but rather is on part-
nering with the patient in his or her experi-
ence of health. Rather than simply using
technological tools, we are using ourselves as
instruments in our patient’s evolving experi-
ence of health. Newman (n.d., HEC Web site)
states, “The theory asserts that every person
in every situation, no matter how disordered
and hopeless it may seem, is part of the uni-
versal process of expanding consciousness—232 SECTION III Nursing Theory in Nursing Practice, Education, Research, and Administration