The School of Nursing at Quinnipiac University saw one of its senior faculty members recognized in major fashion when Cindy Barrere, a professor and the senior director of scholarship and continuing education at the school, was recently awarded the prestigious American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA) 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Cindy says she was “surprised and excited” to receive a recognition which honors her contributions to the advancement of holistic nursing through her professorial role and research at Quinnipiac.

Cindy joined the AHNA in 2006, having become interested in the discipline at a time when it was called “biopsychosocial nursing,” she says. Cindy adds that the core of holistic nursing as caring for the patient’s whole “mind, body,” and “spirit” resonated with her, as did its blend of Western and Eastern schools of thought in medicine.

Eastern methods of health were understood in yoga classes which Cindy has taken, especially the importance of deep breathing with both patients and even her students at Quinnipiac.

Cindy realizes that before students at Quinnipiac can go out into the field of nursing, their success depends upon ensuring that their own healthy mindsets are realized prior to working with a patient in an effort to achieve the same goal. Cindy’s first-year students will engage in deep-breathing exercises, guided imagery, and also create mandala pieces to help “them to focus and relax before their first clinical experience” with patients, she says.

“I teach our students that before classes to help them focus and set attention for the class,” says Cindy.

A healthy approach to oneself as an individual can only carry over to a patient, who then guides the treatment as a respected and recognized individual.

“You approach your patients as an individual, a way that respects and honors the person, that promotes healing and the shared experience of well-being,” says Cindy. “Presence is a deep and profound quality, and it really gets to the core of what's happening.”

While Cindy knows it’s important to put the mind, body, and spirit at ease before caring for a patient, she also emphasizes that understanding the surrounding environment of a patient is another integral aspect of holistic care. After seeing where the patient is, be it in a hospital or a nursing home, then begins the process of creating a more comfortable environment and meeting the patient “from where the patient is at” in order to establish a close connection with someone in need of treatment.

Overall, there are five core values of holistic nursing, and the holistic nursing students at Quinnipiac receive an education in each of them. One of the values pertaining to understanding environment is communication, something learned through establishing simulations in which students navigate how to figure out the best solutions for patients depending on the diverse environment they face on a day-to-day basis.

Cindy explains that one of those simulations is called a “poverty simulation,” where students and faculty “assume the role of up to 26 families facing poverty” due to a variety of circumstances.

“The objective is to sensitize the students to the realities of low-income people,” Cindy says.

Following these simulations, students are debriefed on their experience and how they would approach patients who face many personal and financial obstacles.

Everything which Cindy bestows upon her students speaks to why she was sought out by Quinnipiac to join its faculty. Cindy says the former heads of the School of Nursing “had envisioned that our school would be holistic-endorsed,” and she has seen that goal realized during her time at the school.

“I've continued the effort, and now we have more nurses who are becoming holistic-certified here. I’m so excited. I’m always encouraging that,” she says. “Our nurse practitioner programs also were certified…and we're also in the process of certifying our new programs that are up and running as of this past year. Our goal is to have all of our programs holistic-endorsed as they are created.”

Leadership efforts in holistic nursing haven continued at the AHNA, where Cindy initiated its research consultation program in order to expand resources and significantly enhance the use of scientific evidence among holistic nurses.

“We were trying to organize a way to help a lot of holistic nurses who were part of the association to understand and find resources to help them when they wanted to do a quality improvement project on their unit or an actual research project,” says Cindy.