ERA’S
Curriculum Era: Hospital-based diploma into college
and university.
Research Era:
Grad. Edu. Era:
Theory Era: outgrowth of the research and graduate
education.
NURSING: can be a vocation; can be a discipline with a
professional style of theory-based practice.
NURSING: as a profession is committed to recognizing
its own unparalleled body of knowledge parallel to
nursing practice.
NURSING: is a unique discipline and is separate from
medicine. It has its own body of knowledge on which
delivery care is based.
Commitment to theory-based evidence for practice is
beneficial to patients that it guides systematic,
knowledgeable care.
Theoretical Foundation of nursing: A central concept of
health, person, environment, nursing, and caring will be
explored.
Theoretical: emphasis will be placed on theories related
to the development of therapeutic relationships, modes
of effective communication and nursing therapeutics.
The significance of theory for the discipline of nursing is
that the discipline is dependent on theory for its
continued existence.
Nursing theories: are organized body of knowledge to
define what nursing is, what nurses do, and why do they
do it.
Nursing theories: provide a way to define nursing as a
unique discipline that is separate from other discipline
(e.g., medicine)
Nursing theories: It is a framework of concepts and
purposes intended to guide the practice of nursing at a
more concrete and specific level.
To distinguish this foundation of knowledge nursing
needed to identify, develop and understand concept
theories in line with nursing.
1950s: there is a consensus among nursing scholars that
nursing needed to validate itself through the production
of its own scientifically tested body of knowledge.
1860 Florence Nightingale: defined nursing in her
environmental theory as the act of utilizing the
environment of the patient to assist him in his recovery.
1952 Hildegard Peplau: introduced her theory of
interpersonal relations that puts emphasis on the nurse
client relationship as the foundation of nursing practice.
Patricia Benner: was born in Hampton, Virginia, and
received her bachelor's degree in Nursing from
Pasadena College in 1964, and later a master's degree in
Medical-Surgical Nursing from the University of
California, Berkeley
Philosophy: encompasses more than rhetoric; it is a
guide by which situation are approached, the viewpoint
used to see what is before one, and the method by
which one searches for truth as well as understanding
of what truth is.
Middle range theories: are narrower in scope and offer
an effective bridge between grand theories and the
description and explanation of specific nursing
phenomenon.
Theoretical Definitions: Define a particular concept
based on the theorist's perspective.
Concepts: are often called the building blocks of
theories. They are primarily the vehicles of thought that
involve images.
Generality: It speaks to the scope of application and the
purpose within the theory ( Chinn & Krammer, 2015).
Virginia Henderson: The need theory
Phase in Nurse Patient Interaction:
 Orientation Phase.
 Identification Phase
 Exploitation Phase.
  Resolution Phase.

1960 Faye Abdellah: published her work "typology of 21

nursing problems" that shifted the focus of nursing from
a disease centered approach to a patient- centered
approach.
1970 Martha Rogers: viewed nursing as both a science
and an art as it provides a way to view the unitary
human being, who is integral with the universe.
Nursing philosophies: represent early works predating
the theory era, as well as contemporary works of a
philosophical nature

Source of knowledge: PRIORI

Knowledge structure: includes paradigm, conceptual

models or grand theories, middle range theories,
practice theories, research and practice traditions

1971 Imogene King: Theory of Goal attainment states

that the nurse is considered part of the patient's
environment and the nurse-patient relationship is for
meeting goals towards good health.

Katie Erikson: is one of the pioneers of caring science in

the Nordic countries. When she started her career 30
years ago, she had to open the way for a new science.
We who followed her work and progress in Finland have
noticed her ability from the beginning to design caring
science as a discipline, while bringing to life the abstract
substance of caring.

Middle-range theories: Due to the difficulty of testing

grand theories, nursing scholars proposed using this
level of theory.