Includes bibliographical references (pages 103-113) and index.

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From an emphasis on symptoms to a search for pattern. From viewing disease and disruption as negative to viewing them as part of the self-organizing process of expanding consciousness. From viewing the nursing role as addressing the problems of disease to helping people get in touch with their own patterns of expanding consciousness. One of nursing's foremost theorists, Margaret A. Newman, expands her theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness, a theory that emphasizes the transformative nature of the nursing relationship. She defines the nurse's role as recognizing a person's unique pattern of life and working within that pattern to allow new dimensions to unfold.

This paradigm shift in the nurse-patient dynamic sees health as the pattern of the whole, and disease not as a separate entity, but as a manifestation of the evolving pattern of person-environment interaction. Health is not the absence of disease, but expanding consciousness, a process of becoming more of oneself, of finding greater meaning in life, and of reaching new dimensions of connectedness with other people and the world. Dr. Newman's work focuses on allowing people to explore how their lives are changing in the midst of disease and disorder ... and how a patient may begin to look at life in a different way. Nurses practicing within this perspective experience the joy of participating in the expanding process of others and find that their own lives are enhanced and transformed.

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