Florence Nightingale

May 12, 1820 – August 13, 1910

Publications
Nightingale published 200 books, here are some of them:
Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not (1859)
Notes on Hospitals (1859)
Introductory Notes on Lying-In Institutions (1871)
She also wrote letters and other guides for specific situations for nurses and accounts of her
travels that influenced her theory

Nursing Theory
Environmental Theory – utilizing the environment, often referred by Nightingale as the
“surrounding”. Stressed in this theory is the importance of keeping the client in a noise-free
environment and attending the patient in terms of assessing intake, timeliness of the food, and its
effect on the person.

Important Factors
Five Environmental Factors: Pure air, light, cleanliness and sanitation, efficient drainage, and
pure water.
Quiet area, minimal activity, nutritious and adequate food, and nursing leadership and
management
Ten Aspects of the Environmental Theory that includes the regulation of the said factors.

Metaparadigm
Person – the patient or individual that receives care. It is a multidimensional being as well.
Health – not just the absence of disease, but includes the combined result of environmental,
psychological, and physical factors.
“health is not only to be well, but to be able to use well every power we have.”
Nursing – every woman (in her time) who are responsible for the health of people close to them.
One who maintains the health of houses (environmental factors)
Environment – the one important factor to manipulate for the healing of the patient.
Needs to be created and maintained to a therapeutic environment for the patient.
Margaret Jean Harmon Watson
June 10, 1940 - present

Publications
Jean Watson has published 11 books and authored with others books, journals, and articles. Here
are some of them:
Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring (1979)
Human Science and Human Care – A Theory of Nursing (1985)
Postmodern Nursing and Beyond (1999)
Instruments for Assessing and Measuring Caring in Nursing and Health Sciences (2002)
Caring Science as Sacred Science (2005)
Measuring Caring – International Research on Caritas as Healing (2011)

Nursing Theory
Theory of Transpersonal Caring
Beside medical cure, caring is the main process of nursing wherein it focuses on health and
treatment.
Human caring is the center of nursing.
The theory aims to quantify human caring.
Includes the 10 caritas process and 10 caritative factors.

Important concepts
10 caritas process
10 caritative factors
Society cultivates caring and nursing
Human being – a fully functional integrated self who is more than himself as a whole.
Metaparadigm
Person – human being, person, life, personhood, and self altogether
Health – positive state of physical, mental and social wellbeing with the inclusion of the 3
elements:
1. A high level of overall physical, mental, and social functioning.
2. A general adaptive maintenance level of functioning.
3. Absence of illness
Environment – attending to supportive, protective, and/or corrective mental, physical, societal,
and spiritual environments.
Nursing – concerned with promoting health, preventing illness, caring for the sick, and restoring
health.
Patricia Sawyer Benner
Birth : August 31, 1942
Died : January 1, 2022

Publications
From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Nursing Practice (194)
Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Ethics and Clinical Judgment (with Christine Tanner and
Catherine Chesla) (1996)
Co-authored 12 other books

Nursing Theory
Novice To Expert Theory
Nurses could gain knowledge and skills without actually learning a theory.
Nurse “know how” without “knowing that”
Nursing is made up of the extension of knowledge through research and understanding through
clinical exposure.
Nurses gaining more and more knowledge through experience.
Nurses can acquire a skill without theory.

Important concepts
Five stages of skill acquisition
Novice – the person has no background knowledge; student-nurses; difficulty in assessing a
situation.
Advanced Beginner – when the person can demonstrate performance guided by a mentor;
graduate of a nursing and first employment.
Competent – the nurse is considerable, conscious, and very deliberate in planning the day; more
confident judgement with minimal help from senior nurses.
Proficient – the nurse perceives the situation as a whole; transition to the expert stage.
Expert – the nurse does not rely on senior nurses; better understand the situation.
Metaparadigm
Person - “self-interpreting being, that is, the person does not come into the world predefined but
gets defined in the course of living a life. A person also has… an effortless and non-reflective
understanding of the self in the world. The person is viewed as a participant in common
meanings.”
Health – “on the lived experience of being healthy and ill.”
- What can be assessed

Nursing – “Enabling condition of connection and concern”

- Care and study of lived experience of health, illness, and disease and the relationships
among these three elements.
Environment – Benner referred to it as “situation”
Katie Eriksson

Birth : November 18, 1943

Died : August 30, 2019

Publication

The Suffering Human Being (2006)

Nursing Theory

Theory of Caritative Caring

“Caritative caring means that we take ‘caritas’ into use when caring for the human being in health and suffering… caritative caring is a manifestation of the
love that ‘just exists.’… Caring communion, true caring, occurs when the one caring in a spirit of caritas alleviates the suffering of the patient.”

Take caritas into use when caring.

Manifestation of love.

Alienate the pain.

Important concepts

Caritas – fundamental nature of caring science, also constitutes the motive for all caring.

Caring Communion – constitutes the context of the meaning of caring and is the structure that determines caring reality.

The Act of Caring – contains caring elements (faith, love, hope, tending, playing, and learning), involves the categories of infinity and eternity, and invites
to deep communion.

Act of making something very special out of something less special.

Caritative Caring Ethics

Caring Ethics – basic relation between the patient and the nurse.

Nursing Ethics – ethical principles and rules that guide the work on decisions.

Dignity – one of the basic concepts of caring ethics.

Invitation – when the caregiver welcomes the patient to the caring communion.

Suffering – when a human being struggles between good and evil in a state of becoming; synonymous with pain.

A. Suffering related to illness

B. Suffering caused by care or absence of caring

C. Suffering related to life

Caring culture – used instead of environment.

Total caring reality

PERSON

The axiom that the human being is an entity of body, soul, and spirit who is fundamentally a religious being (but not all human beings have recognized this
dimension); holy; dependent on communion (on concrete or abstract other – another human or some form of God).

HEALTH

Eriksson defined health as soundness, freshness, and well-being’ being whole in body, soul, and spirit; a pure concept of wholeness and holiness.
NURSING

Eriksson emphasizes that caritative caring relates to the innermost core of nursing, distinguished by caring nursing (a kind of caring without prejudice) and
nursing care (based on the nursing care process, and it represents good care only when it is based on the innermost core of caring).

ENVIRONMENT

Eriksson uses the concept of ethos (as in “the characteristic spirit of culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations. (Oxford
Languages)); ethos that refers to home, or where a human being feels at home.
Martha Elizabeth Rogers

May 12, 1914

March 13, 1994

Publications

An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing (1970)

Martha E. Rogers: Her Life and Her Work (1994)

Martha E. Rogers: 80 Years of Excellence (1994)

Nursing Theory

Science of Unitary Human Beings Theory

Nursing is both art and science

The human and environment act as one

Includes the people and the mutual environment field process.

The unitary human being and his or her environment are one.

Major concepts

Energy field – fundamental unit of both the living and non-living.

The field is the unifying concept and energy is its dynamic characteristic.

Irreversible/irreducible whole

Universe of open systems – energy fields are infinite, open, and integral with one another.

Pan-dimensionality – non-linear domain without special or temporal attributes.

Have parameters that describe events that are arbitrary.

There is synergy

Synergy – working collectively

Pattern – distinguishing characteristics of an energy field as a single wave.

Gives identity to an energy field.

Openness – relationship between the person and the environment.

Homeodynamic Principles – dynamic process of homeostasis that includes:

A. Resonance – nature of change

B. Helicy – nature of change is unpredictable, continuous, and innovative.

C. Integrity – is the energy fields of human and environment in a continuous mutual process; reciprocity between human and environment.

Metaparadigm

PERSON – unitary human being is one of wholeness and continuity as well as dynamic; indivisible, pan-dimensional, specific to the whole.
HEALTH – symbolizes wellness and the absence of disease and illness.

NURSING – symbolizes wellness and the absence of disease and illness.

ENVIRONMENT – “irreducible pan-dimensional energy field identified by pattern and manifesting characteristics different from those of the parts. Each
environmental field is specific to its given human field. Both changes continuously and creatively.”
Dorothea Elizabeth Orem

June 15, 1914

June 22, 2007

Publications

Nursing: Concepts of Practice (1971)

Self-Care Theory in Nursing (2003)

Guides for Developing Curricula for the Education of Practical Nurses (1959)

Nursing Theory

Self-Care Deficit Theory

Patients are considered recovered or cured when they achieve independence over their own self-care.

It is composed of four theories: Theory of Self care, dependent care, Self care deficit, and nursing systems.

Major concepts

Theory of Self-Care – practice of activities that maintain life, health, and development. There are three components:

a. Universal Self-Care – air, food, water, elimination/excretion, normalcy.

b. Developmental Self-Care – more specific to the process of growth and development.
c. Health Deviation – when a condition permanently or temporarily alters basic human functions.

Self-Care Agent – provides the basic knowledge for understanding requirements and limitations for the person.

Therapeutic Self-Care Demand – demand is the totality of self-care actions to be performed.

Theory of Dependent Care - explains how the self-care system is modified specific to the person; refers to the care that is provided to a person who is
unable to function and do self-care for his well-being.

Development-Care Demand – the patient’s need; summation of care measures taken so that the person can achieve therapeutic self-care demand.

Self-Care Agency – is a complex acquired by a person to regulate their own human functioning and development.

Dependent-Care Agency – ability of a person to acquire the therapeutic self-care of another person demand so that they may regulate it for the other
person’s self-care agency.

Theory of Self-Care Deficit – self-care deficit occurs when a person cannot carry out self-care requisites.

Theory of Nursing Systems – actions performed by the nurse to meet the therapeutic self-care of the patient.

a. Wholly compensatory support

b. Partial compensatory support
c. Supportive/educative compensatory
Helping Methods
1. Acting or doing for others
2. Guiding
3. Supporting
4. Providing conducive environment
5. Teaching
Metaparadigm
Person – is viewed biologically, symbolically, and socially but still whole person.
Health – is a state characterized by soundness or wholeness of developed human structures
and/or bodily functions and mental functioning.
Nursing – is how healthcare professionals develop a plan of care to meet the patient’s self-care
needs.
Environment – is the physical, chemical, biologic, and social factors that make up who a person
is.
Imogene King
January 30, 1923
December 25, 2007

Publications
Authored in Frey and Sieloff’s Advancing King’s Systems Framework and Nursing Theory;
Middle Range Theories for Nursing Practice Using King’s Conceptual System
Curriculum and Instruction in Nursing: Concepts and Process (1986)
Curriculum Process for Developing or Revising Baccalaureate Nursing Programs (1978)
A Theory for Nursing: Systems, Concepts, Process (1981)
Toward a Theory for Nursing: General Concepts of Human Behavior (1971)

Nursing Theory
Theory of Goal Attainment
Describes a dynamic, interpersonal relationship in which a patient grows and develops to attain
certain life goals. Factors include roles, stress, space, and time.

Major Concepts
King’s Open System Framework
Nursing focus – the care of human being.
Nursing Goal – the health of the individual and health care for the group.
Human Beings – are open system in constant interaction with the environment.

Interacting Systems in the Goal Attainment Theory

1. Personal System – perception, self, growth and development, body image, time, space.
2. Interpersonal system – how the universe interrelated with a nurse or a patient, particularly
in a nurse-patient relationship; interaction; communication; transaction; role; stress.
3. Social System – an organized system of social role, behavior, and practices; organization;
authority; power; status; decision making.
Nurse-Patient Transaction Model
 1. Action – is a means of behavior to achieve something; both physical and mental.
2. Reaction – is a form of reacting or response to a certain stimulus.
3. Interaction – is any situation where the nurse related and deals with the patient.
4. Transaction – is a unique observable in which a human being communicates with the
environment.
Metaparadigm
PERSON – existing in an open system who makes choices and select alternative action.
HEALTH – continuous adjustment to stress in the internal and external environment.
NURSING – is an observable behavior formed in the health care systems in society.
- The goal of nursing “is to help individuals maintain their health so they can function in
their roles.”
ENVIRONMENT – the process of balance involving internal and external interactions inside the
social systems.
Betty M. Neuman
Birth : September 11, 1924
Died : May 28, 2022

Publications
The Neuman Systems Model: Application to Nursing Education and Practice (1982)
Blueprint for Use of Nursing Models: Education, Research, Practice, and Administration (1996)

Neuman Systems Model

States that stress can be painful
A unique, open-system-based perspective that provides a unifying focus for approaching a wide
range of concerns.
How stress can be managed
As system acts as a boundary.

Major Concepts
Wholistic approach
Joyce Travelbee
Human-to-Human Relationship Model
Birth : December 14, 1926
Died : September 2, 1973

Publications
Interpersonal Aspects of nursing (1966)
Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing: Process in the One-to-one Relationship (1969)
Travelbee’s Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing (1979)

Human-To-Human Relationship Model

Everything that a nurse, being a human, says or does with a patient, also human, helps in
fulfilling the purpose of nursing.

Major concepts
Suffering – feeling of unease to discomforts on end and varies in intensity, duration, and depth.
Hope – defined as a faith that can bring change along with something better.
1. It is strongly associated with dependence on other people.
2. It is future oriented.
3. It is linked to elections from several alternatives or escape routes out of its situation.
4. The desire to possess any object or condition, to complete a task or have an experience.
5. Confidence that others will be there for one when you need them.
6. The hoping person is in possession of courage to be able to acknowledge its shortcomings
and fears and go forward towards its goal
Meaning – the reason attributed to a person
Communication – “a strict necessity for good nursing care.”
Self-therapy – use of own personality in full knowledge of it to make a nursing intervention; “the
nurse’s presence physically and psychologically.”
“Targeted intellectual approach by the nurse toward the patient’s situation”

Metaparadigm
PERSON – a human being, including the nurse and the patient.
HEALTH – subjective (health is individually defined state of well-being in accord with self-
appraisal of physical-emotional-spiritual status) or objective ( absence of discernable disease and
as measured accordingly.)
NURSING – "an interpersonal process whereby the professional nurse practitioner assists an
individual, family or community to prevent or cope with experience or illness and suffering, and
if necessary to find meaning in these experiences.”
ENVIRONMENT – not clearly defined.
Lydia E. Hall
Care, Cure, Core Nursing Theory
Birth : September 21, 1906
Died : February 27, 1969

Publications
Hall, Lydia E. Core, Care and Cure Model, Nursing Outlook (1963)
Her works were published in journals such as The Canadian Nurse in “Nursing: What It Is?”
(1964) and in the International Journal of Nursing Studies (1969)

Nursing Theory
Care, Cure, Core
Also known as “The Three Cs of Lydia Hall”
The theory defined nursing as “participation in care, core and cure aspects of patient care, where
CARE is the sole function of nurses, whereas the CORE and CURE are shared with other
members of the health team.”
Care is to establish a relationship with the patient to develop the core.
Has three components that are represented by three independent but interconnected circles; the
core, care, and cure circles, whose size varies depending on the state of the patient.

Major Concepts
The Care Circle – represents the role of the nurse in caregiving for the patient, that which
involves using the concept care and comfort for the person and provide for teaching-learning
activities.
The Core Circle – the patient receiving the nursing care; he sets goals for himself rather than
another person and behave according to his state.
The Cure Circle – the cure is nursing, which involves the application of the nursing process/plan;
nurses share the cure circle with other health professionals.

Metaparadigm
Individual – unique, capable of growth and learning, and requiring total personal approach; the
main reason for care.
Health – State of self-awareness and to achieve health is to identify and overcome problems
through developing self-identity and maturity.
Environment – concerns the individual, where the environment should be in a state where the
nurse focuses on the individual.
Nursing – participating in the care, core, and cure aspects of patient care.
Faye Glenn Abdellah
The Twenty-One Nursing Problems Theory
Birth : March 13, 1919
Died : February 24, 2017

Publications
Better Patient Care Through Nursing Research (1965)
New Directions in Patient-centered Nursing: Guidelines for Systems of Service, Education, and
Research (1973)
Preparing Nursing Research for the 21st Century: Evolution, Methodologies, Challenge (1994)
Patients and Personnel Speak: A Method of Studying Patient Care in Hospitals (1957)

Nursing Theory
The 21 Nursing Problems Theory
“Nursing is based on an art and science that molds the attitudes, intellectual competencies, and
technical skills of the individual nurse into the desire and ability to help people, sick or well,
cope with their health needs.”
Falls into three categories: physical, sociological, and emotional needs.
Used Henderson’s 14 Basic Human Needs in developing the theory.

Major Concepts
21 Nursing Problems
Basic Needs – to maintain good hygiene and physical comfort to promote optimal health.
Sustenal Care Needs – the need that facilitate physiological functions of the body such as oxygen
supply to all body cells.
Remedial Care Needs – identify emotional attributes and awareness.
Restorative Care Needs – acceptance of the optimum possible goals in light limitations.
10 Steps to Identify the Patient’s Problem
11 Nursing Skills
10 Explanations for Nursing as A Comprehensive Service
Metaparadigm
PERSON – “individuals (and families), although she does not delineate her beliefs or
assumptions about the nature of human beings.”
HEALTH – the purpose of nursing services; the dynamic pattern of functioning such as
interaction with forces.
NURSING – a helping profession; doing something for the patient to meet needs.
ENVIRONMENT - home or community from which patient comes.
Virginia Avenel Henderson
Nursing Need Theory
Birth : November 30, 1897
Died : March 19, 1996

Publications
Principles and Practices of Nursing (1939)
Basic Principles of Nursing (1966)
Nursing Research: Survey and Assessment (with Leo Simmons) (1964)
Nursing Studies Index (1972)

Nursing Theory
Nursing Need Theory
Focuses on having a speedy recovery for the patient in a sense of independence and emphasizes
the basic human needs and how nurses can meet those needs.

Major Components
14 Basic Needs/Components of the Nursing Need Theory
 The 14 Basic Needs can also be applied to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Metaparadigm
PERSON – someone who is in need of basic health components and who requires assistance;
someone who does not have autonomy.
HEALTH – the ability of a person to perform tasks independently relating to the 14 Basic Needs.
NURSING – “The unique function of a nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the
performance of these activities…”
ENVIRONMENTAL – as setting that would contribute to the person discovering different
pattern for living, in short, an influence.