Theoretical Foundation in Nursing
JOYCE TRAVELBEE
HUMAN-TO-HUMAN
RELATIONSHIP MODEL OF
NURSING
"human-to-human relationship is the means
through which the purpose of nursing if
fulfilled”
Life Story:
● Psychiatric nurse, educator and writer
born in 1926
● Passed away at 47 yrs old afer a brief
sickness
Publications:
1st Book: Interpersonal Aspects of Nursing 1969
2nd Book Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing
Process in the One-to-One Relationship
-Her model emphasizes empathy, sympathy,
rapport, and emotional aspects of nursing
Sympathy and empathy are both acts of feeling
Theoretical Sources:
● Catholic charity institutions
● Ida Jean Orlando - her instructor
● Viktor Frankl -proposed the theory of
logotherapy, patient is confronted and
reonented toward the meaning of his life
Major Concepts:
•Rapport - experienced when nurse and patient
has progresses through the four interlocking
phases preceding rapport (4 phases of experience)
1. Original encounter -first impressions
2. Emerging identities -perceiving each
other's uniqueness.
3. Empathy -share in the person's
experience
4. Sympathy - nurse wants to lessen the
cause of patient's suffering: "When one
sympathizes, one is involved but not
incapacitated by the involvement."
•Therapeutic use of self -ability to use one's
personality consciously and in full awareness in an
attempt to establish relatedness and to structure
nursing intervention
•Communication -vehicle through which
nurse-patient relationships are established
•Nurse-patient interaction -refers to contact
between a nurse and an ill person, series of
experiences between nurse and patient thru which
the purpose of nursing is accomplished
•Logical form an inductive theory that uses
specific nursing situations to create general ideas
rn,
nene♡
hernandez♡
View of Metaparadigm:
•Nursing - interpersonal process professional
nurse practitioner assists an individual w/
illness and suffering
•Person -unique irreplaceable individual
- a one time being in this world-like yet unlike
any person who has ever lived or ever will live
a unique, irreplaceable individual who is in
continuous process of becoming, evolving and
changing Person patients are only individual
human beings in need of care, services and
assistance of other human beings who can
render the assistance that is needed
•Health -Subjective and objective :
● Subjective health- an individually
defined state of well-being in accord
with self-appraisal of
physical-emotional-spintual status
● Objective health-absence of
discemible disease, disability or defect
as measured by physical examination,
laboratory tests and assessment by
spintual director or psychological
counselor
•Environment - indirectly equated to the
environment. Defined human conditions and
life experiences encountered by all men as:
● Illness-being unhealthy
● Suffering - feeling of displeasure
ranges from simple transitory mental,
physical or spiritual discomfort to
extreme anguish
● Pain is not observable, unique
experience, is a lonely experience that
is difficult to communicate fully to
another individual
● Hope -desire to gain an end or
accomplish a goal combined with
some degree of expectation
● Hopelessness -being devoid of hope
 Theoretical Foundation in Nursing

rn,
nene♡
hernandez♡