JOYCE TRAVELBEE

Human-to-Human Relationship
Model
 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE
❖ 1926 – 1973
❖ Education:
Institution Degree Year
Charity Hospital School of Nursing, Diploma
1946
New Orleans, Louisiana (Nursing Degree)
Louisiana State University,
BSN 1956
New Orleans, Louisiana
Yale University,
MSN 1959
New Haven, Connecticut
Started doctoral
Florida program (not 1973
completed)

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE
❖ Career:
❖ Worked in psychiatric nursing and then taught
psychiatric nursing at DePaul Hospital Affiliate, New
Orleans

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE
❖ Career:
❖ Taught psychiatric nursing at
❖ Charity Hospital School of Nursing
❖ Louisiana State University
❖ New York University

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE
❖ Career:
❖ Associate professor at University of Mississippi
Medical Center School of Nursing (Jackson)
❖ Project director at Hotel Dieu School of Nursing
(New Orleans)
❖ Director of graduate education at Louisiana State
University School of Nursing

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE
❖ Career:
❖ Director of graduate education at Louisiana
State University Medical Center School of
Nursing (New Orleans, Louisiana)
❖ Nursing consultant at Veterans
Administration Hospital (Gulfport,
Mississippi)

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE
❖ 1949 – proposed that obstetrical care should include natural childbirth,
prenatal instruction, the father’s participation in birth, and rooming-in
❖ 1966 – prevention of illness or disease would need to become a priority
area for health care and that the future would bring about “well-adult”
clinics
❖ Reduce admission rates to hospitals and increase health teaching while
implementing measures to conserve health & control symptoms of illness

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE

❖ Assist each other to find meaning in illness while supporting patient’s act of
self-denial and sacrifice in order to preserve health (hospice movement)
❖ 1969 – Continuous appraisal of nursing intervention (nursing competency)
for continuous development and improvement

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE

❖ Publications
❖ 1963 – started to publish articles and journals in nursing
❖ 1966, 1971 – first book, “Interpersonal Aspects of Nursing”
❖ 1969 – second book, “Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing: Process in the One-to-
One Relationship”

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE

❖ Influences
❖ Viktor Frankl – “Logotherapy”
❖ Frieda Fromm-Reichmann – human potential for healing

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 Getting to know the theorist
JOYCE TRAVELBEE

❖ Influences (Theorists)
❖ Ida Jean Orlando ❖ Dorothy Johnson
❖ Lydia Hall ❖ Hildegard Peplau
❖ Myra Levine ❖ Martha Rogers
❖ Faye Abdellah ❖ Ernestine Wiedenbach
❖ Virginia Henderson ❖ Florence Nightingale

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HUMAN – TO – HUMAN
RELATIONSHIP MODEL
 HUMAN-TO-HUMAN RELATIONSHIP

❖ Nursing as an “interpersonal process whereby the professional nurse practitioner assists

an individual, family, or community to prevent, cope with the experience of illness and
suffering and, if necessary , to find meaning in these experiences.” (Travelbee, 1971)
❖ Nursing is fulfilled by human-to-human relationship
❖ “Patient is an individual in need of the services of the nurse.” (Travelbee, 1971)
❖ Nursing needs are met by the nurse who possesses & uses a disciplined intellectual
approach to problems combined with the therapeutic use of self.

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 Hope

❖ A nurse’s job is to help the patient to maintain hope and avoid hopelessness.
❖ Hope helps the suffering person to cope.
❖ “the role of the nurse is to assist the ill person to experience hope in order to cope with
the stress of illness and suffering.” (Travelbee, 1971)

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 Disciplined Intellectual Approach

❖ Provides a logical method to approach nursing problems

❖ Should be learned in collegiate school of nursing
❖ A nurse must think logically, reflect, reason, deliberate, validate, analyze, and synthesize
❖ Nursing is composed of both cognitive and affective components

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 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 (Travelbee, 1971).
❖ It implies the use of reasoning and intellect..
❖ Use of educated heart and educated mind...

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 Phases of Nurse-Patient Relationship

❖ Original Encounter
❖ Emerging Identities
❖ Empathy
❖ Sympathy
❖ Rapport

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 Phases of Nurse-Patient Relationship
Original Encounter
❖ The nurse and ill person form
judgement about each other
❖ Task: break the bond of
categorization in order to
perceive the human being in
the patient” and vice versa
Emerging Identities
❖ The nurse & patient perceive
each other as a unique
person. Bonds begin to form
❖ Task: nurse must be able to
transcend self to some extent
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Empathy
❖ The nurse begins to see the
individual “beyond outward
behavior & sense accurately
another’s inner experience..”
❖ Task: predict what the person
is experiencing with
acceptance.
 Phases of Nurse-Patient Relationship

Sympathy
❖ A demonstration to the person that
he is not carrying the burden of
illness alone
❖ Task: to translate sympathy into
helpful nursing actions.
Rapport
❖ “A process, a happening, & experience,
or series of experiences, undergone
simultaneously by the nurse & recipient
of care” (Travelbee, 1971)
❖ Task: nursing actions are consistent to
alleviate patient’s distress

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Nursing Metaparadigm
 Nursing Metaparadigm
PERSON HEALTH
Person is defined as a human Health is subjective and objective.
being. Both the nurse and the Subjective – individually defined state
patient are human beings of well-being
Objective – absence of discrnible
disease

“an interpersonal process

whereby the professional nurse
practitioner assists an individual,
family, or community to prevent or
cope with experience or illness &
Not clearly defined suffering, & if necessary find meaning
in these experiences
ENVIRONMENT
NURSING

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Strengths & Weaknesses
 Strengths
❖ Proves the importance of
nursing & why we do what we
do
❖ Nursing care is not just focused
on medications and machines to
treat patients
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Weaknesses
❖ Not generally applicable in all
scopes
❖ Difficult theory to uphold
❖ Have to meet all stages before
being able to move on
Application in Healthcare
Setting
 Application

Hospice Care Palliative Care

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Application

Well-Adult Clinics

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 “A nurse does not only seek to
alleviate physical pain or render
physical care – she ministers to the
whole person. The existence of
suffering, whether physical,
mental or spiritual is the proper
concern of the nurse”
- Joyce Travelbee
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