CONTRIBUTION OF NURSING THEORIST
THEORIST PRACTICE
1.Virginia Henderson Assist nurses to describe, explain, and
 predict everyday experiences.
Serve to guide assessment, interventions,
and evaluation of nursing care.
Provide a rationale for collecting reliable
and valid data about the health status
of clients, which are essential for effective
decision making and implementation.
Help to describe criteria to measure the
quality of nursing care.
Help build a common nursing terminology
to use in communicating with other health
 professionals.
Ideas are developed and words are defined.
Enhance autonomy (independence and self-
governance) of nursing through defining its
own independent functions.
2. Faye Glenn he believed that as the education of nurses
Abdellah improves, nursing practice improves as well.
The most important impact of Abdellah¶s
theory to the nursing practice is that it helped
transform the focus of the profession from
EDUCATION
Provide a general focus for curriculum design
Guide curricular decision making.
Many nurse educators feel that the PPC
hospital where all five phases of care are
available can provide clinical experience in
which the nurse can learn to solve basic
RESEARCH
Offer a framework for generating
knowledge and new ideas.
Assist in discovering knowledge gaps in
the specific field of study.
Offer a systematic approach to identify
questions for study; select variables,
interpret findings, and validate nursing
interventions.
Approaches to developing nursing
theory
Borrowing conceptual frameworks from
other disciplines.
Inductively looking at nursing practice
to discover theories/concepts to
explain phenomena.
Deductively looking for the
compatibility of a general nursing theory
with nursing practice.
Questions from practicing Nurse about
using Nursing theory
She has been a leader in nursing
research and has over one hundred
 publications related to nursing care,
education for advanced practice in
nursing and nursing research.
 being ³disease-centered´ to ³patient- centered.
´ The patient-centered approach was
constructed to be useful to nursing practice as
it helped bring structure and organization to
what was often been a disorganized
collection of nursing care experiences. She
categorized nursing problems based on the
individual¶s needs and developed a typology
of nursing treatment and nursing goals which
served as a basis for determining and
organizing nursing care.
Her twenty one nursing problems made
nurses look at patients¶ problems and come
up with nursing plan of care in a thorough
and organized way. Abdellah¶s identification
of health needs as overt and covert assists
nurses in exploring unmasked conditions
about the client and plan appropriate
interventions to address them. Client
centered care emphasizes the principle that
every nursing goal should be geared towards
treating the patient and not just the mere
illness. It has been viewed that if all 21
 problems are investigated, the patient would
 be likely to be thoroughly assessed and thus
will aid the nurse organize appropriate
nursing strategies. Currently, the 21 nursing
 problems have been updated to focus on the
 patient and nursing diagnosis. It has
ultimately helped nurses develop their individual
critical-thinking skills leading to
increase in job satisfaction and more
 productive nurse-patient and nurse-family
interaction.
nursing problems in meeting patients¶ needs.
The three month assignment of professional
nurses may no longer be realistic in such a
setting.
Organization of hospital and community
services based on patients needs
In the intensive care unit, the critically ill
 patients are concentrated regardless
of diagnosis.
These patients are under the constant audio-
visual observation of the nurse, with life
saving techniques and equipment immediately
available
In the intermediate care unit are concentrated
 patients requiring a moderate amount of nursing
care, not of an emergency nature, who
are ambulatory for short periods, and who are
 beginning to participate in he planning of their
own care
The self-care unit provides for patients who
are physically self-sufficient and require
diagnostic and convalescent care in hotel-type
accommodations. This unit serves as a link 
 between the hospital and the home.
In the long-term care unit are concentrated
 patients requiring prolonged care. The
grouping of such patients will permit staffing
 patterns that are less costly
3. Jean Watson Watson¶s work can be used to guide and
improve practice.
It can provide the nurse with the most
satisfying aspects of practice and can provide
the client with the holistic care so necessary
for human growth and development.
Theories must be consistent with  
other validated theories, laws and
principles but will leave open
unanswered questions that need to be
investigated
Watson¶s work is supported by the
theoretical work of numerous humanists,
 philosophers, developmentalists and
 psychologists.
She clearly designates the theories of stress,
development, communication, teaching-
learning, humanistic psychology and
existential phenomenology which provide the
foundation for the science of caring.
Her work Nursing: the philosophy and
science of Caring, she defines her intent to
describe the core of nursing (those aspect s
of the nurse patient relationship resulting in a
therapeutic outcome) rather than the trim
of nursing (the priocedures, Tasks
techniques used in the practice setting) The
framework is not limited to any nursing
specialty.. her works lead to thought-
provoking experience by emphasizing deep
inner reflection and personal growth.
Watson¶s theory is based on
 phenomenological studies that
generally ask questions rather than state
hypotheses. Its purpose is to describe
the phenomena, to analyze and to gain
and
an understanding.
Theories contribute to and assist in
increasing the general body within the
discipline through research
implemented to validate them
According to Watson the best method
to test this theory is through field study.
An example is her work in the area
of loss and caring that took place in
Cundeelee, Western Australia and
involved a tribe of aborigines.
 Bayley discussed the care of a severely
 burned teenagers on the basis of
four conservational principles and discussed
 patient¶s perceptual, operational and
conceptual environment
Pond used conservation model for guiding
the nursing care of homeless at a clinic,
shelters or streets
It was used to develop nursing undergraduate
 program at Allentown college of St.Francis
de sales, Pennsylvania
Used in nursing education program
sponsored by Kapat Holim in Israel
 
researches
Conservational model was used by
Hanson et al.in their study of incidence
and prevalence of pressure ulcers in
hospice patient
Newport used principle of conservation
of energy and social integrity
for comparing the body temperature
of infant¶s who had been placed
on mother¶s chest immediately after
birth with those who were placed in
warmer 

6. Hildegard Peplau Used widely around the world ± nursing
education
Often integrated into policies without credit
to Peplau  ± Public Domain
Patient health education, palliative care,
oncology, AIDS care, quality of life, private
 practice, nurse practitioners, home care &
of course, psychiatric nursing
 Nurse counseling of individuals and groups
7. Calista Roy the nurse assesses first the behaviors and
second the stimuli affecting those behaviors.
In a third step the nurse makes a statement
or 
U.S. focus has been on cost
containment, causing delivery to be
fragmented and restricted - minimal
research efforts
Research has been fairly inconsistent
and scattered abroad
Most within National Healthcare
System of Canada in recent years
Most research has been qualitative ± not
quantitative
Home care, Public Health, Depression,
Education of Patients, Nature of Nurse-
 patient relations, Role expectations,
Preferred Nursing care of ventilated
 patients
(Peterson, 2009)
Yet worldwide influences on the
development of psychiatric nursing
 practice have been substantial
For any theory, the acid test is utility in
 practice
The adaptation model is also useful in If research is to affect practitioners¶
educational setting. Roy states that the  behavior, it must be directed at testing
and retesting conceptual models for 
 provided, budget cuts are leading to
layoffs, and managed care is
controlling funding. Money for  care received by hospitalized patients,
nursing is decreasing and there is a  
threat that associate degree  
programs will be eliminated and
other programs will be downsized.
There is a need for urgency to
continue theory development in
nursing to justify and guide practice.
  As the field of nursing continues to
face decreases in funding, nursing
will have to continue to justify its
existence to governmental and
private sources in order to continue  
to receive support. As nurses, it is  
important that we continue to
understand the importance of theory,
research, and evidence based
practice; our "profession" depends
on it.
9. R o s e m a r
y  A transformative approach to all
i e R i z z o P a r
s levels of nursing
y Differs from the traditional nursing
process, particularly in that it does
not seek to ³fix´ problems
y  Ability to see patients perspective
allows
nurse to ³be with´ patient and guide them
toward desired health outcomes
y Nurse-person relationship cocreates
changing health patterns
Johnson¶s model in initiating studies on
matters such as the quality of nursing
the alterations in behavioral patterns of 
psychiatric patients, management of 
pain in patients with metastatic cancer,
accomplishments made by ill-stricken
children in comparison to those made by
children who are presumably healthy,
etc; all of which have significantly
impacted profession of nursing and
differentiating it from the world
of medicine. Johnson¶s model has assisted
researchers in studying and analyzing
various behavioral subsystems among
human beings spanning from the time of 
birth well into seniority. The model has
been utilized and incorporated in the
development of numerous assessment
tools used to examine and measure
alterations in human behavior.
Johnson¶s model has essentially paved
the way for the development of theory
for the purpose of developing a
foundation of knowledge for nurses to
utilize in practice.
y Enhances understanding of human
lived experience, health, quality
of life and quality of nursing
practice
y Expands the theory of
human becoming
y Builds new nursing knowledge
about universal lived
experiences which may
ultimately contribute to health
and quality of life
promote health to every individual. The following are just examples of methods on how to promote health to our fellows.

Insight from an ICU nurse« Although most patients admitted in the ICU are experiencing health problems, Health Promotion Model may still be applied in one way or another. This is