Comfort as process and product, merged in holistic nursing art.

Although many scholars discuss nursing as an art and science, the practice of nursing art remains unspecified and elusive, especially to learners. Nursing art is the esthetic use by nurses of scientific and humanistic principles of care applied creatively within specific contexts of care. One form of nursing art is called comfort care. Comfort care entails the process of comforting actions and the product of enhanced comfort, both of which have been described in separate programs of research. Because the process of comfort includes the product of comfort, the construct of comfort care designates a necessary merger between the programs of research. A template is presented that guides the practice of comfort care within a context of holistic nursing art.