Virginia

Henderson
1897 – 1996

Definition of
Nursing

Virginia Henderson was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1897, the fifth of the
eight children of Lucy Minor Abbot and Daniel B. Henderson. She was named after the
State her mother longed for. At age four, she returned to Virginia and began her
schooling at Bellevue, a preparatory school owned by her grandfather William
Richardson Abbot. Her father was a former teacher at Bellevue and was an attorney
representing the Native American Indians in disputes with the U.S. Government.
Virginia Henderson viewed the patient as an individual who requires help toward
achieving independence and completeness or wholeness of mind and body. She
clarified the practice of nursing as independent from the practice of physicians and
acknowledged her interpretation of the nurse’s role as a synthesis of many influences.
Her work is based on (1) Thorndike, an American psychologist, (2) her experiences with
the Henry House Visiting Nurse Agency, (3) experience in rehabilitation nursing, and (4)
Orlando’s conceptualization of deliberate nursing action.
Henderson emphasized the art of nursing and proposed 14 basic human needs
on which nursing care is based. Her contributions include defining nursing, delineating
autonomous nursing functions, stressing goals of interdependence for the patient, and
creating self-help concepts. Her self-help concepts influenced the works of Abdellah
and Adam.
Henderson made extraordinary contributions to nursing during her 60 years of
service as a nurse, teacher, author, and researcher, and she published extensively
throughout those years. Henderson wrote three books that have become nursing
classics: Textbook of the Principles and Practice of Nursing (1955), Basic Principles of
Nursing Care (1960), and The Nature of Nursing (1966). Her major contribution to
nursing research was an 11-year Yale-sponsored Nursing Studies Index Project
published as a four-volume-annotated index of nursing’s biographical, analytical, and
historical literature from 1900 to 1959.
In 1958, the nursing service committee of the International Council of Nurses
(ICN) asked Henderson to describe her concept of nursing. This now historical
definition, published by ICN in 1961, represented her final crystallization on the subject:

“The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the
performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to
peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength,
will, or knowledge; and to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence
as rapidly as possible”

Henderson’s definition of nursing was adopted subsequently by the ICN and

disseminated widely; it continues to be used worldwide. In The Nature of Nursing: A
Definition and Its Implications for Practice, Research, and Education, Henderson (1966)
proposed 14 basic needs upon which nursing care is based.
 Henderson identified three levels of nurse-patient relationships in which the
nurse acts as: (1) a substitute for the patient, (2) a helper to the patient, and (3) a
partner with the patient. Through the interpersonal process, the nurse must get “inside
the skin” of each of her patients in order to know what help is needed. Although she
believed that the functions of nurses and physicians overlap, Henderson asserted that
the nurse works in interdependence with other health care professionals and with the
patient. She illustrated the relative contributions of the health care team in a pie graph.
In The Nature of Nursing: Reflections after 25 Years, Henderson (1991) added
addenda to each chapter of the 1966 edition with changes in her views and opinions.
Henderson said of her theory that “the complexity and quality of the service is limited
only by the imagination and the competence of the nurse who interprets it”. Her theory
has been applied to research in the specialized area of organ donation and framed a
discussion of remembering the art of nursing in a technological age. Henderson’s work
is viewed as a nursing philosophy of purpose and function.

STRENGTHS
Virginia Henderson’s concept of nursing is widely accepted in nursing practice
today. Her theory and 14 components are relatively simple, logical, and can be applied
to individuals of all ages.

WEAKNESSES
There is an absence of a conceptual diagram that interconnects the 14 concepts
and subconcepts of Henderson’s theory. On assisting the individual in the dying
process, there is a little explanation of what the nurse does to provide “peaceful death.”
The prioritization of the 14 Activities was not clearly explained whether the first one is
prerequisite to the other. But still, it is remarkable that Henderson was able to specify
and characterize some of the needs of individuals based on Abraham Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs.

APPLICATION
Henderson’s Needs Theory can be applied to nursing practice as a way for
nurses to set goals based on Henderson’s 14 components. Meeting the goal of
achieving the 14 needs of the client can be a great basis to further improve one’s
performance towards nursing care. In nursing research, each of her 14 fundamental
concepts can serve as a basis for research although the statements were not written in
testable terms.