Talk:Subspecialties of Nursing and Advanced Practice

Running head: THEORIES

Theories Lee E. Scott California State University, Fresno

Theories Nursing 221

1. Briefly (1-2 sentences) identify the key ideas or characteristics of each of the four historical eras of development in the field of nursing.

a. The curriculum era: This addresses the question of specific courses, standard study that nursing students need to reach their goals. This evolved nursing education from the hospitals into the universities.

b. The research era: This is specialized education, knowledge development in research courses towards advanced higher education on a graduate level. The emphasis is arriving at the understanding of the scientific world with the research path to new nursing knowledge.

c. The graduate education era: Master’s degree and doctoral programs in nursing evolved to meet society’s need for nurses with specialized education. Also, it is necessary for research and graduate education increasing the studying of research and conceptual theories development.

d. The theory era: It is the natural development of the research and graduate education eras. Also, emphasis is increased knowledge research; theories put together producing nursing science.

2. Briefly (1-2 sentences), in your own words, define the following:

a. Nursing philosophy is furthering the areas of human science through the analysis of reasoning and logical argument. It is a historical and traditional source for the practice to guide nurses in their work.

b. Conceptual model gives nursing its starting point (reference), and guides to look, and translates the evidence of interest to the profession of nursing care.

c. Nursing theory is collecting data, describe, explain, and predict nursing practice. It brings together an organized structure, and various nursing theories that are abstract, but points to conceptual aspect of nursing practice.

d. Middle range nursing theory is a clearer focus, and direct compared to the abstract grand theory. It much more concrete, and falls in the middle of nursing theory. Middle range theory gets into the specifics of nursing action within the nursing theory they evolved.

3. Identify 3 benefits to studying and implementing nursing theory. , prediction It guides nursing practice, education, research, analyze, and critical thinking skills.

4. Briefly differentiate between rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism stresses priori reasoning for advance knowledge. This is knowledge coming from reasoning based on theory-then-research strategy. If it does not meet the theoretical tests, then the theory is discarded. Reason is the source of its concepts.

Empiricism is based on the idea of sensory experience coming within inductive reasoning. Its method is based on the idea of a collection of facts to form a generalization which is research-then-theory strategy. If we do not have a source of knowledge, then experience is only source of ideas.

5. Give an example of each of the following (do not use the book example):

a. Concrete concept textbook, tree, flowers, thing, objects, people

b. Abstract concept human body, mass, temperature

c. Discrete concept gender, ethnic, background, religion,

d. Continuous concept blood pressure, pain, spiritual,

6. Choose a concept that you might use as a research variable. Provide a theoretical and an operational definition for your variable.

a. Concept: The research variable would using Dorothea Orem’s theory which is a self care theory in maximizing the patient's level of self care used in developing nursing courses, and is operational in the VA Hospital System. Self-care deficit theory is focused with evaluating the self-care agent’s ability to meet therapeutic self-care demand.

b. Theoretical definition: Orem’s theory focus of nursing is on the identification of the patient’s self-care requisites. Orem defines the person or persons as the self-care agent (SCA). The goal is to involve deliberate actions to promote health, and well-being. Self-care deficit theory (SCDT) goes with the nursing process as a way of building nursing systems to compensate for the self-care deficit.

c. Operational definition: How to apply this theory is to set goals that are measurable. Self-care, according Orem is the practice of all the activities that the patient tries to accomplish and perform on his or her behalf in maintaining life, health, and well-being on a satisfactory level.