Nevada nurses allowed to use “healing touch” on patients

Monday, Sept. 20, 1999 | 8:29 a.m.

The Nevada State Board of Nursing gave its formal approval Friday based on the recommendations of its Nursing Practice Advisory Committee.

That panel had been studying the issue for months at the request of nurses who wanted to be able to provide these kinds of therapies to their patients, Executive Director Kathy Apple said.

"A lot of the patients and consumers are looking for an alternative to the medical mode," she said.

Nurse Michael Tanaka is among those who redirects his patients' energy as he takes their pulses, healing them with his touch as he checks their blood pressure.

He said that while some nurses already had been offering their patients alternative therapies, what kinds of practices fell within the scope of nursing was "a gray area."

The board's new advisory opinion is based in part on those from other states. It specifies that nurses may only perform complementary therapies that are noninvasive, nonchemical and have minimal risk of harm. Patients must consent to any alternative therapy.

The use of herbal medicines and recommendations to take megadoses of vitamins are forbidden.

The opinion also specifies that nurses may not perform therapies that require licensure or certification by another state board if they don't hold such licenses.

Acupuncture and homeopathy are both, for example, regulated by separate state boards.

What's left are approaches ranging from aromatherapy to music therapy to healing methods involving theories about the body's energy flow, nurses say.

These are all methods of "bringing in the energy of healing and giving people different options," said nurse Leslee Kosloy, a committee member who was instrumental in drafting the opinion.

Tanaka, who works in University Medical Center's trauma intensive care unit, practices a specific form of healing touch. The practice is based on the theory that the human body is an electrical system that emits energy.

"A lot of time when someone is in pain energy will stagnate. Moving the energy reduces the pain in the area," Tanaka said.

Ideally the therapy would take half an hour on its own. But in the busy hospital setting, Tanaka fits in the healing touch while he's doing other medically necessary hands-on procedures such as bathing patients or checking their vital signs.

Most of his patients are comatose but he says he can see positive reactions in their physiology such as reduction in blood pressure or improvement in the color of their skin.

Knowledge of and comfort with alternative therapies often help families feel comfortable bringing their own cultural traditions about healing into hospitals, Tanaka said.

From crystals to chanting, many culturally specific beliefs have been shut out of hospitals because families are worried about how the health professionals caring for their loved ones will react, he explained.

Complementary therapies can be taught to patients or their families to help them become involved in the process of their own healing, Kosloy added.

"People are realizing that pills and illness, there's more to it than that. They need to be given more responsibility for their health," she said.