The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Nursing

The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Nursing is a pragmatic text assisting nurses at every career level through the challenges and rewards of their everyday duty to care. It advances the seminal work of Drs. Betty Ferrell and Nessa Coyle to give voice to the suffering of patients, their families, and their communities, as well as the suffering of nurses and other clinicians.

This second edition has been updated in light of health and social care changes from the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the social determinants of health and increased visibility of marginalized populations across physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, ethical, cultural, and end-of-life domains to support whole-person and whole-people care. Contributing authors emphasize the qualitative experience of those who suffer alongside the best available evidence for person-centered nursing to promote meaning, growth, and introspection within the field of nursing. New and expanded chapters offer broader perspectives of patient populations across diseases and across the lifespan. Concrete steps for nurses to grow toward personal and professional healing and wholeness are provided.

Compassionate and holistic, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Nursing reflects the lived experience of patients, families, and communities at the intersection of high-quality evidence, offering a rare window into what it means to practice nursing today in response to the suffering of those they serve.

William E. Rosa is Assistant Attending Behavioral Scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center and Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Miami Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas. Dr. Rosa is the editor of four books and has been recognized with numerous distinctions. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and the New York Academy of Medicine.

Betty R. Ferrell is Professor and Director of Nursing Research at City of Hope Medical Center in California. She is also Principal Investigator of the End of Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) project. Dr. Ferrell is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine.