RUSSELL, Ky. — On New Year’s Day, the nursing staff of Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital will join with nurses around the globe in participating with the Million Nurse Project.

At noon on Jan. 1, nurses and staff of OLBH will gather at the hospital’s front circle to pray. Similar events around the globe will occur simultaneously.

The project’s stated goal is to “honor and extend the human caring vibration of nurses into the universal energy field of humanity facilitating healing and health for all.”

The series of heart-centered meditations and events around the globe will be led by Dr. Jean Watson. Watson is a professor of nursing and the endowed chair in Caring Science at the University of Colorado Denver and Health Sciences Center.

She is founder of the original Center for Human Caring in Colorado and the International Caritas Consortium, a network of systems using caring theory to transform practitioners and systems.

This event was inspired when Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle reached more than a million people around the globe simultaneously by offering a course on Tolle’s book, “A New Earth.”

The vision was expanded through evidence-based research and science of the heart, developed by Institute of HeartMath and others.

This latest evidence-based science of the heart confirms that humans meditating or praying on heart-centered feelings of love, gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, and caring radiate an electromagnetic field several feet beyond themselves.

When working from a heart centered loving – caring consciousness, there is more ‘coherence’ in the human electromagnetic field radiating from the heart.

“Nurses around the world bring this loving heart-centered caring energy of love and caring to their individual work every day,” Sandra Daniel, OLBH director of clinical nursing education, said.

“It’s nice for us all to take a moment that will be shared around the globe to reflect this energy. As a faith-based facility, OLBH is particularly proud to participate in this effort by demonstrating our belief in the power of prayer.” OLBH nurses and staff not working Jan 1 are being asked to stop at noon wherever they are to pray and participate.

For more information concerning OLBH, contact the OLBH CareLine at (606) 833-CARE (2273) or visit the hospital’s Web site at www.olbh.com