Theories as the Basis for Nursing Practice

Theories as the Basis for Nursing Practice

Theory development is the fundamental step for expansion of nursing knowledge. The knowledge has been borrowed from different disciplines to build the nursing theories. The categorization of theories is based on their scope of practice. The grand nursing theories are the most complex and abstract in their nature. Middle range theories are inducted mostly from grand nursing theories. Orem’s self-care model is clear and descriptive; the theory has been applied, analyzed in a precise method to various areas in the current nursing practice successfully.

A comprehensive knowledge of nursing theories is an integral part of graduate nursing. Initially I was also wondering just like the graduate student in the beginning of chapter 2 in (McEwen & Willis, 2011) about the application of theory to nursing practice. However the initial theory classes were lot of information in a short duration. Over the time of the course it became clear that theory development in nursing has been crucial to nursing emerging as a profession. The knowledge for nursing theory development has been based on silent knowledge, where the role is limited to following physician orders, received knowledge; this is the information from other fields like sociology, psychology, physiology and anthropology. Later on the theory development was based on individual experiences, practical skills and procedures and empirical data and evidence based practices (McEwen & Willis, 2011). Nurse Practioners need to familiarize and incorporated the changing health care demands. In order to foster a healthy trusting nurse patient relationship to provide cost effective care nursing theory understanding is crucial (Hayes, 2007).

Nursing theories have been classified based on their scope of…