Roles of the Nurse - Answers Providing direct care: RNs work in busy intensive care units and in small
health clinics. They assess infant and toddler growth and development and promote healthy child
rearing in Canada's many northern, rural, urban and ethnic communities.
Providing preventive care: RNs run health and safety programs (in factories, for example) and they work
with children, teenagers, adults and the elderly.
Research: There are RNs doing research in all areas of nursing care.
Teaching: RNs teach groups of clients about health care and teach other nurses about providing care.
Administration: RNs participate in the administration of hospitals and other practice settings. Nurses
also work in provincial/territorial or federal governments
Community Health Nursing - Answers The goal of the community health nurse is to promote, protect
and preserve the health of the public
Some important skills Nurses need - Answers Ethics, Observation skills, physical endurance, computer
literacy, math skills, teamwork skills, communication/interpersonal skills
Theory - Answers A theory is a purposeful set of assumptions or propositions that identify the
relationships between concepts.
Provides a systematic view for explaining, predicting, and prescribing phenomena.
Components of a theory - Answers → Phenomenon: an aspect of reality that can be consciously sensed
or experienced. I.e pain
→ Concepts: Mental formulation of objects or events, representing the basic way in which ideas are
organized and communicated, i.e anxiety
→ Assumptions: A description of concepts or connections of concepts that are accepted as true, includes
"taken for granted" ideas, i.e "nursing exists to serve a social mandate."
→ Conceptual Framework: Structure that links concepts together for a specific purpose
Types of Theory - Answers → Grand: global conceptual framework, represent world views
→ Middle-range: more limited scope, less abstract
→ Descriptive: describes and speculates on why phenomenon occurs
→ Prescriptive: Address nursing interventions
Nursing Theory - Answers Reflects a conceptualization of nursing for the purpose of describing,
explaining, predicting, prescribing phenomena.
,It organizes knowledge about nursing to enable nurses to use it in a professional and accountable
manner.
Early Nursing Practice - Answers Florence Nightingale: (Mother of scientific nursing), helped knowledge
and practice become formalized into a professional context, focused on patients and the environment.
Provided nurses with a theory of nursing practice with patients and the patient environment.
WWII: Developments in science and technology had a powerful influence on healthcare, "nursing
science" was being developed.
Nursing knowledge: theorists used conceptual frameworks nurses apply their knowledge to nursing
practice.
⭐Quick Quiz - Answers Q: Why are theories in nursing important?
A: They provide a systematic view of explaining, predicting, and describing phenomena.
5 Major Theoretical Models - Answers 1.Practice-based theories
2.Needs theories
3.Interactionist theories
4.Systems theories
5.Simultaneity theories
Florence Nightingale - Answers → Grand theory (practice based theory) -1859
→ Disease is a reparative process in which the nurse role helps change the environment, and the
environment can affect health and wellness. With Nightingale providing directions for ventilation,
warmth, light, diet, cleanliness, variety, noise.
→ 3 relationships:
1.The environment to patient (environment affects health of both sick and well persons)
2.The nurse to environment
3.The nurse to patient
Martha Rogers - Answers → Simultaneity theory-1970
→ Key concepts of the energy field continuum:
Client is not simply a person but an energy field in constant interaction with their environment.
→ Energy field: describe individual and environment as energy fields
, → Openness: continues change/mutual process between individual and environment
→ Pattern: Energy field perceived as "single wave"
Dorothea Oram - Answers → Needs theory (self care)
→ Key concepts:
1.Individual practice self-care
2.Self care necessary to regulate human functioning
3.Therapeutic self care demand
4.Self care agency
5.Self care deficits
Sister Callista Roy - Answers → Systems theory (theory of adaptation)-1960s
→ Key concepts:
1.Adaptation: The individual's ability to cope with a changing environment
2.Adaptive System: Consists of two major internal control processes
3.Adaptive modes: The 4 ways a person adapts
4.Adaptive level: Determined by the combined effects of stimuli
Betty Neuman - Answers → Systems theory- 1972
→ Key concepts:
1.The nurse is concerned all the variable affecting an individual's response to stressors
2.Stressors
3.Interventions: Primary, secondary, tertiary
Jean Watson - Answers → Simultaneity Theory
→ Science of caring- 1979 and 1985
→ Key concepts
Practice of loving
Being present