Travelbee (1966) stated that, "A nurse does not only seek to alleviate physical pain or render physical care. She ministers to the whole person. The existence of the suffering whether physical, mental or spiritual is the proper concern of the nurse". I agree with this saying as it describes the whole function of a nurse to their patients holistically.
             As physician treats patients' signs and symptoms to correct physical abnormalities, we as nurses see the individual who have physical,mental,social, and spiritual needs. When we receive our patients during handover, the first thing to do is to assess our patients' status physically, check the vital signs, review their laboratory results, give their medications, follow up if they have pending procedures. We continually assess our patients to intervene if there are irregularities that needs our independent nursing actions like tepid sponge bath if they have fever or requires reporting to the physician as a dependent nursing action. We also use the 5 interactional phases of human-to-human relationship model by Travelbee ( phase of the original encounter, phase of emerging identities, phase of empathy, phase of sympathy, and phase of rapport) to connect with our patients and build a good relationship with them so they will participate well with our interventions and contribute to their fast recuperation. We talk with our patients and explore their feelings to know if there are needs other than physical aspect that requires nursing attention. For example, our patients may have psychological needs when they are anxious about undergoing a procedure, social needs when they have to be isolated because of their infectious condition, and spiritual needs when they feel that they are already hopeless.

           Indeed, nurses treat the whole person physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. We are very important in the fast recovery of our patients with our excellent nursing assessment and interventions.