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The Nurse as Wounded Healer Theory (NWHT) was developed by Dr. Marion Conti-O’Hare in her 2002 book The Nurse as Wounded Healer: From Trauma to Transcendence. In her book, Dr. Conti-O’Hare draws on her decades of experience as a registered nurse in the psychiatric setting to argue that nurses can only effectively heal others if they first heal themselves. This theory builds upon the Jungian archetype of the wounded healer, which can be traced back to Greek mythology. This archetype is one which suggests that “healing power results from a healer’s own injuries” (Christie & Jones, 2014).
The NWHT starts with the general assumption that nurses are healers. This may come as no surprise to many in the profession, but it needs to be said in order to give a clear understanding of what nursing encompasses. Nurses possess the ability to heal, regardless of whether they have the ability to diagnose and prescribe. Dr. Conti-O’Hare argues that nursing has a holistic understanding of what it means to be human and therefore, what it means to be ill and to be healed. The Greek root for heal is hal, which means ‘to make whole’. This understanding of healing is more abstract and nuanced than that of traditional Western medicine and therefore allows for a broader definition of what healing can be. Wounding can broadly encompass physical, psychological, and social wounds, among others. Being wounded is therefore inevitable at some point in each person’s life. The idea that all humans experience trauma was also posited in the works of Carl Jung (Christie & Jones, 2014).
However, the core of the NWHT is not simply that nurses are both healers and people who have been wounded; it is that we become true healers by acknowledging and exploring our own wounds. It could be said that we must be our own first patients. Through a process of self-reflection, transformation, and transcendence, the wounded healer is one who is no longer bound to their trauma, but has transformed it into something meaningful in their life and the lives of those around them.
In addition to being able to help others identify and transcend their own wounds, the wounded healer is one who is better suited to care for others. Those of us who have not addressed the trauma in our life are referred to as the ‘walking wounded’ by Conti-O’Hare. These are people still bound to their wounds, and the NWHT argues that this unaddressed trauma in walking wounded nurses manifests itself in their patient care. People who have explored the trauma in their life see it as something meaningful; that the trauma ultimately served some kind of purpose for them and that they are now stronger for having endured. This compassion for the self manifests as compassion for others and as an ability to communicate human warmth.
Lastly, the NWHT acknowledges that the trauma in nurses’ lives can be of a personal nature, professional nature, or a combination of both. Conti-O’Hare argues that nursing itself is a wounded profession, evidenced by the “inability of nurses to have a significant voice in crucial national and international health care policies” and by our contributions being “minimized” (Conti-O’Hare, 2002, p. vii).