Nursing panel backs alternative therapies

Art Nadler

Thursday, July 22, 1999 | 12:02 p.m.

A long-standing request by nurses to practice certain alternative therapies was approved Wednesday by the advisory committee to the Nevada State Board of Nursing.

The committee will bring its proposal to the board, which meets Sept. 16-17 in Las Vegas. If approved, nurses will be able to do noninvasive, nonchemical and minimal risk therapies.

Kathy Apple, executive director of the Board of Nursing, said the committee purposely declined to define what therapies would be included. Instead, it decided to only "set parameters" for nurses to base their decisions.

Some of the therapies will include, for example, healing touch therapy and use of aroma therapy oils in treating cancer patients.

Nurses will not prescribe medications or diagnose patients, Apple said, and they must refrain from using herbal medicines or recommending vitamins.

"If a nurse learns the therapy as part of basic education, it will be within their scope of duties," Apple said. "If you learn it afterwards, (through continued education) the therapy must follow the parameters."

Mike Tanaka, a registered nurse at University Medical Center, practices healing touch therapy -- the manipulation of energy fields around a person's body. He does this by moving his hands above an injured area of the body, or physically touching a certain spot.

"This decision will give the nurses permission to look into other forms of complementary medicine, so we can look at the patients as a whole," Tanaka said. "Healing touch has been around since the 1980s."

Tanaka said healing touch is taught as a continuing education course. He said it accelerates wound healing, increases hemoglobin and decreases pain.

Cynthia Bunch, spokeswoman for the Nevada Nurses Association, said that statistically two-thirds of nurses use alternative therapies. She expects that the field will grow over the next 10 years. "Ironically, physicians aren't trained in it," Bunch said. "Nurses are trained in alternative methods. It's an integration of mind, body and spirit."