NURSING THEORIES
Four Major Concepts:
Person refers to all human beings. People are the recipients of nursing care; they include individuals, families,
communities, and groups.
Environment includes factors that affect individuals internally and externally. It means not only in the everyday
surroundings but all setting where nursing care is provided.
Health generally addresses the person’s state of well-being.
Nursing is central to all nursing theories. Definitions of nursing describe what nursing is, what nurses do, and how
nurses interact with clients.
THEORIST AND FOCUS
THEORY
Ernestine Wiedenbach To assist the individuals in overcoming
Clinical Nursing – A obstacles that prevent meeting
Helping Art healthcare needs. She advocated that the
nurse’s individual philosophy or central
purpose lends credence to nursing care.
*The Prescriptive Theory of She believed that nurses meet the
Nursing* individual’s need for help through
identification of needs, administration of
help, and validation that actions were
helpful. Components of clinical practice:
Philosophy, Purpose, Practice and an Art
Imogene M. King To communication to help the client
reestablish a positive adaptation to his or
*Systems Framework and her environment. She described nursing
Goal Attainment Theory* as a helping profession that assists
individuals and groups in society to attain,
maintain, and restore health. If this is not
possible, nurses help individuals die with
dignity.
In addition, King viewed nursing as an
interaction process between client and
nurse whereby during perceiving, setting
goals, and acting on them, transactions
occur and goals are achieved.
Josephine Paterson and Humanistic nursing embraces more than
Loretta Zderad a benevolent technically competent
subject- object one-way relationship
*Humanistic Nursing* guided by a nurse in behalf of another.
METAPARADIGM
PERSON: Any individual who is receiving
help from a member of the health
profession or from a worker in the field of
health.
ENVIRONMENT: Not specifically
addressed
HEALTH: Concepts of nursing, client, and
need for help and their relationships imply
health-related concerns in the nurse—
client relationship.
NURSING: the nurse is a functional
human being who acts, thinks, and feels.
All actions, thoughts, and feelings
underlie what the nurse does.
PERSON: Biopsychosocial being
ENVIRONMENT: Internal and external
environment continually interacts to assist
in adjustments to change.
HEALTH: A dynamic life experience with
continued goal attainment and
adjustment to stressors.
NURSING: Perceiving, thinking, relating,
judging, and acting with an individual who
comes to a nursing situations
PERSON:Human beings are viewed from
an existential framework of becoming
through choices. “Man is an individual
being necessarily related to other men in
 Rather it dictates that nursing is a time and space.
responsible searching, transactional ENVIRONMENT: Refer to as community.
relationship Humanistic nursing must take into
whose meaningfulness demands account all aspects of community: the
conceptualization founded on a nurse's fact that we live our lives in communities
existential awareness of self and of the of others, of time, of space, and of
other” experiences. It is only through community
that we are able to reach our full
potential.
HEALTH: Health is a matter of personal
survival, a process of experiencing one’s
potential for well-being and more-being, a
quality of living and dying
NNURSING: Nurturing response of one
person to another in a time of need that
aims toward the development of well-
being and more-being.

Ida Jean Orlando She believed that the nurse helps PERSON: Unique individual behaving
The Dynamic Nurse- verbally and nonverbally.
Patient Relationship patients meet perceived needs that the Assumption is that individuals are at
patient cannot meet for themselves. times able to meet their own needs and
To interact with clients to meet immediate at other times unable to do so
*Nursing Process needs by identifying client behaviors, ENVIRONMENT: Not defined
Discipline* nurse’s reactions, and nursing actions to HEALTH: Not defined. Assumption is that
take being without emotional or physical
discomfort and having a sense of well-
being contribute to a healthy state.
NURSING: Professional nursing is
conceptualized as finding out and
meeting the client’s immediate need for
help