Theory and its author

Description of the theory

Contribution of the theory

Nursing Process Theory: Ida Jean Orlando

Orlando came up with a nursing process with five steps: assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Assessment is figuring out what the patient needs to be helped and is retrieved from the patient’s behavior. Diagnosis is the identification of what is needed for that help. Planning is setting goals to relieve the patient’s distress. Implementation is the carrying out of the planned goals. And evaluation is determining if the need is met and how effective it was [9] .

The nurse uses the standard nursing process in Orlando’s Nursing Process Discipline Theory, which follows: assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. The theory focuses on the interaction between the nurse and patient, perception validation, and the use of the nursing process to produce positive outcomes or patient improvement. Orlando’s key focus was the definition of the function of nursing. The model provides a framework for nursing, but the use of her theory does not exclude nurses from using other nursing theories while caring for patients [10] .

Her goal was to contribute to concerns about

a) The nurse-patient relationship;

b) The nurse’s professional role and identity;

c) Knowledge development distinct to nursing.

It allows nurses to formulate an effective nursing care plan that can also be easily adapted when and if any complexity comes up with the patient. According to her, persons become patients requiring nursing care when they have needs for help that cannot be met independently because of their physical limitations, negative reactions to an environment, or have an experience that prevents them from communicating their needs. The role of the nurse is to find out and meet the patient’s immediate needs for help [11] .

Dorothea Elizabeth Orem’s Self-Care Deficit theory

Dorothea Orem; is the theory of self-care deficit that is composed of three related theories:

1) Personal care theory, describing how people take charge of themselves; 2) Self-care deficit theory, which explains why people can be helped through nursing; 3) The theory of nursing systems describing and explaining the relationships that need to be initiated and maintained for nursing to be produced. In this model of practice, the outcomes of all nursing action should be to promote self-care in all individuals [12] .

This model is essential to the field, as it provides the profession with a guide to patient care and a general frame of reference that links the structural environment to the models of behavior and knowledge. It is useful for professional nurses in the areas of nursing practice; this approach to personal care is contemporary with the concepts of health promotion and health maintenance. This model undertakes to maintain life, health and well-being and will be applied to achieve three expected outcomes that can help prevent illness and promote health: improving client education; decreased levels of illness and disability; and an increased ability to make decisions about health [9] .