Theoretical Foundations of Nursing

The field of nursing has a unique professional culture, with particular ways of doing things and thinking about things.

Broadly speaking, these ideas can be described as a Nursing knowledge, and it guides the day to day responsibilities of nurses and distinguishes nurses from other health care providers like physicians, pharmacists, and therapists.

Now this body of knowledge can be organized into categories.

Going from abstract to concrete, the four categories are: a metaparadigm, philosophies, conceptual models or frameworks, and the last category is theories.

Nursing metaparadigm

Let’s start by looking at the most abstract category which is the nursing metaparadigm.

The metaparadigm consists of four fundamental concepts that define the nursing discipline and together they form the foundation for the field.

The four concepts are: person, nursing, health, and environment.

Let’s go through them one by one.

Person refers to the recipient of nursing care.

It could be an individual, a family, or a community.

It could also refer to a group of people that require a specific type of health care, for example, premature infants or people on dialysis.

Nursing refers to the care the person receives from the nurse.

For example, administering a medication, taking a person’s blood pressure, or even health education.

Health refers to a person’s overall level of wellness, and not simply the absence of disease.

It incorporates the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual aspects of a person’s life.

It also includes the person’s view of their own health and their health-related behaviors such as diet, level of activity, and habits like smoking.

Finally, environment refers to the context in which nursing care is provided.

It could mean the physical location that the care is given, like an operating room or the patient’s home, but it also includes factors like a person’s socioeconomic situation.

Now, it’s important for nurses to consider all four concepts simultaneously.

For example, if the person is a newly diagnosed elderly women with diabetes, and the nurse is teaching them about insulin use, which falls under nursing, then they need to consider the patient’s environment, such as can this person afford this particular type of treatment.

The nurse also need to consider how the person views their own health and if they are likely to adhere to the treatment plan.

Philosophy

The next category is philosophy.

This one is slightly more concrete than the metaparadigm.

A philosophy is a set of beliefs that emerge from values shared by members of a nursing community.

These can help explain how processes work and guide clinical practices.

For example, Florence Nightingale, who is considered to be the founder of modern nursing, valued improving the overall health of the patient rather than simply treating their illnesses.

She believed that the relationship between the patient and their environment is a vital aspect of health care, and that this explained why patients in a clean, and restful environment recovered faster.

She applied this philosophy while caring for patients during the Crimean War by making sure patients had clean and comfortable rooms, as well as balanced healthy diets, and even encouraged visits from small pets!

In fact, her philosophy became so popular that it helped shift modern healthcare towards a much more holistic view.

Conceptual Model

The next category is a conceptual model, or conceptual framework, which are even more concrete.

Concepts are concise ways of describing or generalizing complex phenomena.