ROGER`S SCIENCE OF UNITARY HUMAN BEINGS NURSING CONCEPTUAL

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INTRODUCTION
 MARTHA ROGERS` theory is known as the SCIENCE OF UNITARY
HUMAN BEINGS (SUHB).
 The theory views nursing as both as science and an art as it provides a way
to view the unitary human being who is integral with the universe.
 The unitary human being & his or her environment are one. Nursing focuses
on people and the manifestation that emerge from the mutual human-
environment field process.
 Her model addresses the importance of the environment as an integral part
of the patient, & uses that knowledge to help nurses blend the science & art
of nursing to ensure patients have a smooth recovery & that can get back to
the best health possible.
HISTORY & BACKGROUND
Date Event Place
May 12, 1914 Born Dallas Texas
1936 Nursing Diploma Knoxville General
Hospital
1937 Bachelor’s Degree George Peabody
College in Nashville,
Tennessee
1940 Accepted a position (5 in Hartford, CT at the
years); Visiting Nurse
1st as an Assistant Association
Supervisor then as an
Assistant Education
Director & lastly as the
Acting Director of
Education. At the same
time, she was
completing her course
work at Teacher`s
ROGER`S SCIENCE OF UNITARY HUMAN BEINGS NURSING CONCEPTUAL
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College & completed
her degree requirements
(Master`s degree)
1945 Master`s degree in Teacher`s College,
Public Health Nursing Columbia University in
New York
1954 Master`s degree in The John Hopkins
Public Health & Doctor University in
of Science Baltimore, Maryland
1954 the Head of the New York University
Division of Nursing
March 13, 1994 Died (80 YRS OLD) Knoxville, Tennessee.

 She was a teacher & mentor to an impressive list of nursing scholars &
theorist including Newman & Page
 Martha Rogers wrote 3 books that enriched the learning experience &
influenced the direction of nursing research for countless students:
Educational Revolution in Nursing (1961), Reveille in Nursing (1964):
(1963), edited a journal called Nursing science & also the time she
formulated ideas about the publication of her 3rd book “An Introduction to
the Theoretical Basis of Nursing (1970) and the last introduced the 4
Rogerian Principles of Hemodynamic.
 Martha Rogers was honored with numerous awards and citations for her
sustained contributions to nursing & science.
 In 1996, she was posthumously inducted into the American Nurses
Association`s Hall of Fame
 She had a memorial place in the sidewalk hear her childhood home in
Knoxville
 a patient can`t be separated from his/her environment when addressing
health & treatment
 “Science of Unitary Human Beings”
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PUBLICATIONS OF MARTHA ROGERS
 Theoretical Basis of Nursing (1970)
 Nursing Science & Art: A Prospective (1988)
 Nursing Science of Unitary, Irreducible, Human Beings Update (1990)
 Vision of Space Based Nursing (1990)
MAJOR CONCEPTS & METAPARADIGM OF MARTHA ROGERS
NURSING THEORY
Human-Unitary Human Beings
 A person is defined as an irreducible, indivisible, multidimensional energy
fields identified by a pattern & manifesting characteristic that are specific to
the whole & which cannot be predicted from knowledge of the parts
 A person is also a unified whole, having its own distinct characteristics that
can`t be viewed by looking at, describing or summarizing the parts
Health
 expression of the life process
 signifies an irreducible human field manifestation. It cannot be measured by
the parameters of biology or physics or of the social sciences
Environment Field
 An irreducible, indivisible, pan dimensional energy field identified by
pattern & integral with the human field.
Nursing
 The study of Unitary, irreducible, indivisible human & environmental
fields: people & their world.
 A learned profession that is both a science & an art
 Focus is the care of people & the life process of human beings
 Its purpose is to identify & examine the phenomenon that is central to its
concern, the unitary human being.
 The concept of nursing encompasses 2 dimensions:
1. Independent Science of Nursing
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 An organized body of knowledge which is specific to nursing
is arrived by scientific research & logical analysis
2. Art of Nursing Practice
 Creative use of its knowledge is the art of its practice
 The art of nursing involves the imaginative & creative use of nursing
knowledge
 The purpose of nurses is to promote health and well-being for all persons &
groups wherever they are using the science & art of nursing
 extend into all areas: at home, at school, at work, at play, in hospital,
nursing home, clinics, in this planet & now moving into outer space (space
nursing)
Energy Field
 The fundamental unit of the living & the non-living
 Field is the unified concept
 Energy signifies the dynamic nature of the field; a field is in continuous
motion & is infinite
 The energy field continuously varies in intensity, density & extent
Openness
 Refers to qualities exhibited by open systems; human beings & their
environment are the open systems.
 The human field & the environment field are constantly exchanging energy.
There are no boundaries or barriers to inhibit energy flow between fields
(Rogers, 1970)
 The human beings openly participate in energy transformation with the
environment creating mutual change (Leddy, 2004 p. 15)
Pattern
 The distinguishing characteristics of an energy field perceived as a single
wave. Rogers call it “an abstraction” that gives identity to the field.
 Patterning “is the dynamic or active process of the life of the human being”
that is “accessible to the senses” (Alligood & Fawcett, 2004 p. 11)
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 Pattern manifestations include “a person`s experiences, expressions,
perceptions and physical, mental, social & spiritual data (Davidson, 2001 p.
103)
Pandimensional
 A nonlinear domain without spatial or temporal attributes
 The parameters in language that humans use to describe events are arbitrary
 The present is relative, there is no temporal ordering of lives
Synergy
 The unique behavior of hole systems, unpredicted by any behaviors of their
component functions taken separately.
 Human behavior is synergistic

Principles Of Homeodynamics
 Homeodynamics should be understood as a dynamic version of
HOMEOSTASIS (a relatively steady state of internal operation in the living
system)
 The principles of Homeodynamics postulate the way of perceiving unitary
human beings
 The 3 principles of Homeodynamics as proposed by Rogers are:
1. Resonancy
 Speaks to the nature of the change occurring between human &
environmental fields that undergoes continuous dynamic
metamorphosis in the human-environment process.
 The life process of human beings is a symphony of rhythmical
vibrations oscillating at various frequencies.
 Is continuous change from lower to higher frequency wave
patterns in human and environmental fields
2. Helicy
 unpredictable but continuous, nonlinear evolution of energy
fields as evidenced by nonrepeating rhythmicities due to
constant interchange between human & the environment
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 innovative; because of constant interchange, an open system is
never exactly the same at any two moments; rather, the system is
continually new or different
 The life process evolves in sequential stages along a curve that
has the same general shape
 Is continuous innovative, unpredictable, increasing diversity of
human & environmental field patterns
3. Integrality
 Is a continuous mutual human & environment field process
 Change occurs by continuous repatterning of the of the human &
environmental fields by resonance waves
 The fields are one and integrated but unique to each other
Assumption
 Man is a unified whole possessing his own integrity & manifesting
characteristics that are more than & different from the sum of his parts
 Man & environment are continuously exchanging matter & energy with one
another
 The life process evolves irreversibly & unidirectional along the space-time
continuum
 Pattern & organization identify the man & reflect his innovative wholeness
 Man is characterized by the capacity for abstraction and imagery, language
& thought sensation & emotion
Strengths
 Martha Rogers concepts provide a worldview from which nurses may
derive theories & hypotheses & propose relationships specific to different
situations
 Rogers` theory is not directly testable due to lack of concrete hypotheses but
it is testable in principle
Limitations
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 Rogers` model does not define particular hypotheses or theories for it is an
abstract, unified & highly derived framework
 Testing the concepts` validity is questionable because its concepts are not
directly measurable
 The theory was believed to be profound & was too ambitious because the
concepts are extremely abstract
 Rogers claimed that nursing exists to serve people, however, nurses roles
are not clearly defined
 The purpose of nurses is to promote health & well-being for all persons.
However, Rogers` model has no concrete definition of a health state.
Application
 allows nurses to operate from a place of scientific assurance in the work
they do, all the while maintaining focus on the patient they work with
 is a useful model for addressing the growing issue of nursing burnout,
which is known to cause increase rates of morbidity & mortality in the
clinical setting.
 Rogers` theory had a strong impact on health & nursing , Rogers helped
improve patient centered nursing practice