Nursing Theory and Knowledge Structure

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the structure of nursing knowledge, including the metaparadigm, philosophies, conceptual models, and nursing theories from Dr. Woodruff's lecture.

Metaparadigm

The most abstract aspect of the structure of nursing knowledge that acts like the foundation of a house, consisting of four major concepts: person, environment, health, and nursing.

Person (Metaparadigm Concept)

The recipient of nursing care, which may include individuals, patients, groups, families, and communities.

Environment (Metaparadigm Concept)

The internal and external surrounds that affect the client, including the physical setting where nursing takes place, family or social structures, and psychological or physiological conditions.

Health (Metaparadigm Concept)

The degree of wellness or well-being that the client experiences.

Nursing (Metaparadigm Concept)

The attributes, characteristics, and actions of the nurse providing care on behalf of, or in conjunction with, the client.

Nursing Philosophy

A set of beliefs about the nature of how the world works that begins to put together some or all concepts of the metaparadigm; statements of beliefs and values about nursing that provide bases for thinking and acting.

Nightingale's Philosophy

A philosophy focused on the relationship of the nurse to the patient to restore health by altering environmental factors (such as clean air, water, adequate ventilation, sunlight, cleanliness, quiet, and balanced diet) and protecting the patient from harm.

Henderson's Philosophy

A philosophy defining nursing's unique function as assisting the individual, sick or well, in the performance of activities contributing to health, recovery, or a peaceful death that they would perform unaided given necessary strength, will, or knowledge.

Henderson's 14 Basic Needs

Fourteen holistic components of patient care (spanning physical, psychological, emotional, sociologic, spiritual, and developmental needs) where the nurse acts as a helper to assist the patient in achieving independence.

Watson's Philosophy

A philosophy recognizing caring as the basis of nursing practice and scholarship, highlighting the transpersonal human-to-human relationship, health as harmony (unity of mind, body, and soul), and health promotion.

Caritas Processes

Watson's ten caring practices centered on care versus cure, involving appreciating or giving special attention to a specific person by embracing altruistic values, instilling hope, and creating a healing environment.

Nursing Conceptual Model

An organizational structure that creates clearer connections between concepts; models are less abstract and more formalized than philosophies, but more abstract than nursing theories.

Orem's Self-Care Model

A conceptual model whose goal is to determine the patient's ability to provide effective self-care, executed through diagnostic operations, prescriptive operations, and regulatory operations.

Self-Care Deficits

In Dorothea Orem's model, the patient limitations identified during diagnostic operations where nursing intervention is required because patient self-care demands exceed capability.

Roy's Adaptation Model

A conceptual model based on modifying the patient's environment to promote effective coping and adaptation when environmental demands exceed the person's adaptive mechanisms.

Nursing Theory

A group of related concepts, definitions, and statements that describe a certain view of nursing phenomena (observable occurrences) from which to describe, explain, predict, or control outcomes.

Grand Theory

A broad, complex conceptualization of nursing phenomena that is highly abstract, positioned just below the metaparadigm in the hierarchy of nursing knowledge.

Middle-Range Theory

A category of theory characterized by a narrower focus and more concrete ideas that bridges grand theories with day-to-day nursing practice.

Practice-Level Theory

The most specific and concrete level of nursing theory, designed to guide clinical action toward particular, defined patient outcomes.

Empirical Indicator

The most concrete component of the structure of nursing knowledge, situated below theories in the spectrum from abstract to concrete.

Leininger's Theory of Culture Care Diversity

A transcultural nursing theory focusing on comparative cultural care values, beliefs, and practices to provide culturally specific and universal nursing care practices that promote health, well-being, or culturally meaningful death.

Culturally Congruent Care

Cognitively based assistive, supportive, facilitative, or enabling acts or decisions that are tailor-made to fit an individual's, group's, or institution's cultural values, beliefs, and lifeways.

Culture Care Sunrise Model

A conceptual model that illustrates how worldview, cultural, and social structure dimensions influence care expressions, folk care, professional systems, and nursing care decisions.

Modes of Nursing Decisions and Actions (Leininger)

The three action modalities used to achieve culturally congruent care: cultural care preservation & maintenance, cultural care accommodation & negotiation, and cultural care repatterning & restructuring.

Peplau's Theory of Interpersonal Relations in Nursing

A nursing theory centered on the therapeutic relationship between nurse and patient, with goals of patient survival, understanding health problems, and learning new behavior patterns across varied nurse roles.

Orlando's Nursing Process Theory

A theory describing how nurses process observations of patient behavior and determine immediate patient needs through deliberate, interactive validation to relieve distress or discomfort.

Theory-Based Practice

The application of nursing wherein nurses ground clinical reasoning in a specific nursing theory while implementing the nursing process in a structured, systematic manner.

Theory-Based Research

Investigation that tests and refines the body of nursing knowledge, generating evidence to enhance quality of care and evaluate patient outcomes.