Healing Touch for Nurses & Healthcare Professionals
Healing Touch builds upon the values and theories that have long been at the heart of professional nursing. Through professional training, nurses gain practical skills that bring holistic nursing principles to life in everyday practice.
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Healing Touch Program is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
Why Nurses & Healthcare Professionals Choose Healing Touch
Healthcare is increasingly embracing whole-person, patient-centered care, and evidence-informed, non-pharmacologic approaches that complement conventional medical treatment. Healing Touch provides nurses with practical skills that strengthen therapeutic relationships, enhance compassionate care, and support the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of those they serve.
By promoting patient comfort and relaxation, Healing Touch may also contribute to greater patient satisfaction and help organizations manage costs through its practical, low-resource approach.
Whether practicing in hospitals, clinics, hospice, rehabilitation, behavioral health, or community settings, providers learn to integrate Healing Touch into professional practice in ways that support their patients, their own well-being, and their organization’s goals for quality, patient-centered care.
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Healing Touch & Holistic Nursing
Healing Touch was originally developed by Janet Mentgen, RN, as a nursing continuing education program and continues to reflect the core values of holistic nursing. It recognizes the interconnectedness of body, mind, emotion, spirit, relationships, and environment while encouraging nurses to care for the whole person—not simply the diagnosis or disease.
Grounded in compassion, therapeutic presence, intentional caring, and respect for each person's innate capacity for healing, Healing Touch complements modern holistic nursing by providing practical skills that nurses can immediately apply in clinical practice.
Healing Touch Program has been peer-reviewed and is endorsed by both the American Holistic Nurses Association and the Canadian Holistic Nurses Association.
Healing Touch Embodies Holistic Nursing Principles
Caring for the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of each person.
Bringing focused attention, compassion, and genuine connection to every interaction.
Recognizing that caring for your own well-being supports resilience, compassionate presence, and the ability to care for others.
Honoring each person’s natural capacity for healing and supporting their individual healing journey.
Complementing conventional healthcare with gentle, non-pharmacological approaches to comfort and well-being.
Bringing conscious intention, awareness, and compassion to every aspect of care.
Caring Science & Jean Watson
Healing Touch closely aligns with Dr. Jean Watson's Theory of Human Caring and the Caritas Processes®, which emphasize authentic presence, caring relationships, compassion, healing environments, and the transformative power of human connection.
Rather than adding another task to the nurse's workload, Healing Touch helps nurses deepen the caring moments that already exist within everyday practice. Through Healing Touch education, nurses strengthen their ability to:
- Practice authentic presence
- Cultivate compassionate relationships
- Create healing environments
- Honor the whole person
- Develop self-awareness and self-care
- Integrate caring consciousness into clinical practice
- Foster transpersonal caring relationships
Healing Touch Program is proud to be a Watson Caring Science Institute Endorsed Program.
"Healing Touch is an example of an intentional caring-healing modality grounded in ethics, philosophy, values and consciousness consistent with my original Theory of Human Caring and Transpersonal Caring. Thus, there is a convergence between my work in Caritas Nursing and Healing Touch—they both work from an energetic framework of Universal Love as the basis for all healing and all caring-healing relationships."
— Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN
Healing Touch & Nursing Theory Alignment
Healing Touch complements many of the nursing theories that have shaped modern professional nursing, bringing the principles of caring science to life in everyday practice. Through Healing Touch, nurses develop practical ways to deepen therapeutic presence, compassionate connection, and whole-person care. These skills help translate nursing theory into meaningful interactions that honor each patient as a whole person and support the caring relationship at the heart of nursing.
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Jean Watson's Theory of
Human Caring
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Barbara Dossey's Theory of
Integral Nursing
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Florence Nightingale's
Environmental Theory
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Martha Rogers' Science of
Unitary Human Beings
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Margaret Newman's Health as
Expanding Consciousness
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Rosemarie Parse's
Human Becoming Theory
Learn Healing Touch
Healing Touch Program offers a structured, standardized educational pathway, and a board-certified credential that supports lifelong learning and professional development.
Healing Touch Program is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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