FAYE GLENN

ABDELLAH
21 Nursing Problems
Get to Know the Theorist
• BIRTHDAY – MARCH 13, 1919
• NEW YORK CITY
• BASIC NURSING EDUCATION – MAGNA CUM LAUDE IN (1942)
- FITKIN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL SCHOOL OF NURSING, IN NEPTUNE, NEW JERSY.
• BSN – 1945
• MASTERS OF ARTS – 1947 DEGREE IN PHYSIOLOGY
• DOCTORS OF EDUCATION – 1955
- Teachers College at Columbia University.
First Nurse and First Woman to serve as “Deputy Surgeon General of the United States.
• US NATIONAL WOMEN’S HALL OF FAME 2000
• In her early twenties, Faye Abdellah worked as a health nurse at a private school,
and her first administrative position was on the faculty of Yale University from
1945-1949.
• “120 Principles of Nursing Practice,” using a standard nursing textbook published
by the National League for Nursing.
• In 1949, she met Lucile Petry Leone, the first Nurse Officer, and decided to join the
Public Health Service.
• n 1957, Abdellah spearheaded a research team in Manchester, Connecticut, that
established the groundwork for what became known as progressive patient care.
• Abdellah developed the Patient Assessment of Care Evaluation (PACE), a system
of standards used to measure the relative quality of individual health-care facilities
that were still used in the healthcare industry into the 21st century.
Military Nursing Service

• During her 40-year career as a Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Public Health
Service from 1949 to 1989, Abdellah was assigned to work with the Korean people
during the Korean War. As a senior officer, she was alternatively assigned to Japan,
China, Russia, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries to identify the Public
Health Service’s role in dealing with various health problems. She was able to
assist and initiate, in an advisory role, numerous studies in those countries.
• She served as Chief Nurse Officer from 1970 to 1987 and was the first nurse to
achieve the rank of a two-star Flag Officer named by U.S. Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop as the first woman and nurse Deputy Surgeon General from 1982 to
1989. After retirement, Abdellah founded and served as the first dean in the
Graduate School of Nursing, GSN, Uniformed Services University of the Health
Sciences (USUHS).
Abdellah’s Typology of 21 Nursing
Problems
• Book, Patient-Centered Approaches to Nursing, emphasizes nursing science and
has elicited changes throughout nursing curricula.
Awards and Honors
• Faye Abdellah is recognized as a leader in nursing research and nursing as a
profession within the Public Health Service (PHS) and as an international expert on
health problems. She was named a “living legend” by the American Academy of
Nursing in 1994 and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000
for a lifetime spent establishing and leading essential health care programs for the
United States. In 2012, Abdellah was inducted into the American Nurses
Association Hall of Fame for a lifetime of contributions to nursing.
 21 NURSING PROBLEM
• To maintain good hygiene and physical comfort.
• To promote optimal activity: exercise, rest, sleep
• To promote safety by preventing accidents, injuries, or other trauma and preventing the spread of infection.
• To maintain good body mechanics and prevent and correct the deformity.
• To facilitate the maintenance of a supply of oxygen to all body cells.
• To facilitate the maintenance of nutrition for all body cells.
• To facilitate the maintenance of elimination.
• To facilitate the maintenance of fluid and electrolyte balance.
• To recognize the physiologic responses of the body to disease conditions—pathologic, physiologic, and
compensatory.
• To facilitate the maintenance of regulatory mechanisms and functions.
 21 NURSING PROBLEM
• To facilitate the maintenance of sensory function.
• To identify and accept positive and negative expressions, feelings, and reactions.
• To identify and accept interrelatedness of emotions and organic illness.
• To facilitate the maintenance of effective verbal and nonverbal communication.
• To promote the development of productive interpersonal relationships.
• To facilitate progress toward achievement and personal spiritual goals.
• To create or maintain a therapeutic environment.
• To facilitate awareness of self as an individual with varying physical, emotional, and developmental
needs.
• To accept the optimum possible goals in the light of limitations, physical and emotional.
• To use community resources as an aid in resolving problems that arise from an illness.
• To understand the role of social problems as influencing factors in the cause of illness.
Patient-Centered Approaches to Nursing
Conclusion
• Abdellah’s typology of 21 nursing problems is a conceptual model mainly
concerned with patient’s needs and nurses’ role in problem identification using a
problem analysis approach.

• According to the model, patients are described as having physical, emotional, and
sociological needs. People are also the only justification for the existence of
nursing. Without people, nursing would not be a profession since they are the
recipients of nursing.