**8. Summary/conclusion**

Nurses should strive to always make the most of the short time they have with each patient. As nurses, we need to promote a patient's psychological and emotional well-being in order to facilitate physical healing, especially in a poor economic situation. When we do this, our relationship with the patient alters and develops into something more encouraging than it was before. This contributes to better patient outcomes and can heighten the happiness and perseverance in our work as nurses. By doing this, informal caregivers would emulate and continue home care.

There are many easy ways to develop relationships with patients and encourage a sound psychological, emotional and spiritual environment.


Holistic nursing is the concept of caring for a person as a whole. The purpose is to return the patient as a whole to as close to normal as possible even when receiving care at home. Holistic nursing highlights on the nurses considering the link between minds, body, emotion, spirit, social, cultural, environmental and past relationships in order to return the patient to a whole. This however has not always been likely to attain. The idea of caring for the whole person, not just their physical body, is one that dates back to Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale devotedness was to care for those who could not care for themselves. Florence Nightingale herself advocated holistic care by recognising the importance of environment touch, light, scents, music and silent reflection in treatment process.

There is a direct relationship between economy and health and by implication of nursing profession. The present economic depression places an enormous threat as its end is not sure. This chapter therefore tried to bridge the gap between holistic care, palliative care, which embodied all the components of spirituality, and the terminally ill patients needing home care. This has a lot to do with economic situation of the populace, especially in the low- and middle-class countries of the world. Since the elderly and the terminally ill patients preferred home care, it is pertinent that all the components of care be provided to take care of the total man.
