Collective Healing: A Relational and Meaning-Centered Concept in Nursing Science.

Résumé

Communities worldwide experience collective trauma arising from disasters, pandemics, political violence, displacement, and historical oppression. Although collective healing appears in qualitative and interdisciplinary scholarship, it remains inconsistently defined within nursing science. Guided by Rodgers and Knafl's evolutionary concept analysis, this study examined peer-reviewed literature to clarify defining attributes, antecedents, and consequences. Findings conceptualize collective healing as a relational, meaning-centered, socially embedded, and nonlinear process emerging in response to shared trauma and shaped by collective identity, structural conditions, and sustained relational connection. This analysis advances theoretical clarity within nursing science and establishes collective healing as a critical construct for trauma-informed and equity-oriented scholarship.