title: Strengths-based nursing.
abstract: Strengths-based nursing (SBN) is an approach to care in which eight core values guide nursing action, thereby promoting empowerment, self-efficacy, and hope. In caring for patients and families, the nurse focuses on their inner and outer strengths-that is, on what patients and families do that best helps them deal with problems and minimize deficits. Across all levels of care, from the primary care of healthy patients to the critical care of patients who are unconscious, SBN reaffirms nursing's goals of promoting health, facilitating healing, and alleviating suffering by creating environments that work with and bolster patients' capacities for health and innate mechanisms of healing. In doing so, SBN complements medical care, provides a language that communicates nursing's contribution to patient and family health and healing, and empowers the patient and family to gain greater control over their health and healing.
authors.affiliation: Laurie N. Gottlieb is a professor of nursing at McGill University in Montreal. The author acknowledges Bruce Gottlieb, PhD, for his advice and support in preparing this manuscript. Contact author: laurie.gottlieb@mcgill.ca. The author and planners have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.
authors.forename: Laurie N
authors.initials: LN
authors.lastname: Gottlieb
mesh_terms: D003422:Critical Care; D004509:Education, Nursing, Continuing; D006293:Health Promotion; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009736:Nursing Process; D011361:Professional Competence