
Holistic OT and Holistic Nurse Have a Familial Connection
On September 25 Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L, Holistic OT and Katheryn “Katie” Darlington, RN, Holistic Nurse Clinician met for the first time – and they are also cousins.
Katie and Emmy volunteered to be on a committee for a professional guided imagery association in 2015. Katie recognized Emmy’s last name as being the same as her maternal grandmother. They are both descendants of Jean Vadnais, a pioneer settler, for whom Lake Vadnais and Vadnais Heights in Minnesota was named.

Emmy Vadnais, OTR/L fashioned the term “Holistic OT” as a proposal for a specialty in the OT profession after the term “Holistic Nurse” as this is the nursing profession specialty area for nurses who focus on holistic and integrative health. Emmy provided care alongside several Holistic Nurses when she worked at the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing in Minneapolis from 2003 – 2005 when she wondered, “Why are there not Holistic OTs?”
Now there are! Emmy is grateful to the nursing profession for helping lead the way in holistic and integrative health and to see it spread into occupational therapy and beyond – and even more excited to have a blood line connecting herself as a Holistic OT with a Holistic Nurse!
They both share a passion for holistic and integrative health and will stay in touch mutually supporting each other, the nursing and occupational therapy professions, and all of health care with integrative health.

We are all related in way way, shape or form. As holistic and integrative health continues to expand we wonder what kinds of familial or familiar connections will come y(our) way?…

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