Online Companion: Fundamentals of Nursing Standards and Practice 2E

Chapter Summary

In Chapter 2, the student is introduced to the central questions that are asked and addressed by the discipline of nursing. The basic components of a theory are defined. The purposes for using a theory are to describe, explain, or predict the phenomena that nurses observe in nursing situations. A theory of nursing helps to analyze and organize the ever-increasing information used in health care and provides a logical framework for communicating with members of the health care team.

Three types of theories are described: grand theories, middle-range theories, and micro-range theories. These classifications are based on the relative specificity and concreteness of a theory's components. Knowledge development in nursing is further described as paradigms. The concepts of person, environment, health and nursing are common to the metaparadigms in nursing: the Totality paradigm and the Simultaneity paradigm. The two paradigms differ in their view of the goal of nursing and the view of the person who is interacting with a nurse. The early nursing theorists, from Florence Nightingale to Joyce Travelbee, asked the question, "What is nursing?" These theories focused on defining the nature and processes of the nurse-patient relationship. Contemporary theorists, like Orem, Roy, and Rogers, develop the question, "When is nursing needed?"

While the elements of each nursing theory vary, they have a common relationship in that nursing practice, nursing theory and nursing research are interdependent processes within the discipline of nursing.