Nursing Our Healer's Heart

A gentle exploration of nurse-specific traumatization, which affects 96% of nurses, along with an actionable recovery plan for nurses to heal together as they begin to thrive instead of just survive in their practices.

The nursing profession is in crisis. Within a decade, the world will have just over half the number of nurses it needs. The global nursing workforce has experienced mass, complex trauma secondary to healthcare system inadequacies and a global pandemic. Traumatized and burned out nurses are leaving their roles or the profession in unprecedented numbers. Those who remain are stretched to or beyond their capacity. While system-level strategies aim to address this crisis, none of them consider nurse traumatization and its impact upon patient safety, outcomes, and quality of care. We cannot wait for health systems to prioritize nurse safety. Nurses can and must come together as a global community to heal through avoidable and unavoidable nurse-specific traumatization while partnering with healthcare leaders to usher in a new era of nursing.

This book, through an actionable framework, guides nurses in healing the traumas and hardships they’ve endured as individuals and nursing communities. Grounded in the sciences of unitary caring, integrative nursing, neurophysiology, and transpersonal neurobiology, this book supports nurses in restoring their healers’ heart as they come together to address the deep trauma, burnout, attrition, and presenteeism that are central to the nursing crisis. Nurses will learn the language of their nervous system and how to navigate it as a foundational practice to support professional wellbeing. Each nurse will discover their unique innate care plan, which will guide their healing and co-healing with other nurses. By embracing the healing and practices offered in this book, nurses will learn how to support their nervous system regulation so they can thrive instead of survive in practice. Working from their healed scars instead of their open wounds, nurses can effectively lead sustainable organizational change and health care reforms that prioritize nurse safety and professional wellbeing.

Lorre Laws is an author, healer, teacher, nursing professor, and leader whose scholarship and clinical practice centers on nurse traumatization, burnout, integrative health, nurse safety and professional wellbeing. In her role as an integrative nursing professor, colleagues refer to her as a “master teacher” while students dubbed her as “humanity’s nurse”. Dr. Lorre helps nurses and health care professionals recover from trauma and burnout so they can thrive in their practices instead of just surviving them. As nurses heal together, they can require system changes as they usher in the Nursing 2.0, a new paradigm that prioritizes nurse safety and professional wellbeing.

Dr. Lorre founded The Haelan Academy, a nonprofit organization where nurses across the globe can come together in a safe and nurturing virtual space to share and be supported in their healing journeys together. She is an informative and entertaining keynote speaker and retreat leader who educates and inspires. Dr. Lorre has published numerous scholarly articles and has presented her work to national and international audiences.

Dr. Lorre is currently based in southern Arizona USA where she enjoys the love of family, friends, and community. She enjoys farm-to-table cooking, hiking, weight training, yoga, and a myriad of healing arts, practices, and traditions. She is attuned to her healer’s heart and its calling to be of service to the global nursing community. She lives in alignment with her overarching mission: “It’s not necessarily how I make a difference; I just want to be certain that I do.”