Select and analyze a nursing theory of your choice.
Provide a brief background of the theorist include information about their education, career, and any contributions that are relevant to the development of the theory.
Explain why the theorist is significant in the world of nursing.
Tips: Keep this section concise, yet informative enough for the reader to understand the origin of the theory.
--Basic Concept Analysis
Purpose: Clearly outline the core components of the nursing theory.
Content Requirements:
Identify and briefly explain the major concepts that form the basis of the theory.
Discuss how these core concepts work together to define the theory.
Use clear definitions and simple examples if appropriate to illustrate each concept.
Career & Contributions: Her career was defined by her service during the Crimean War (1853–1856). Upon arriving at military hospitals in Scutari, she observed horrific sanitation conditions. By implementing strict hygiene and environmental controls—such as clean water, ventilation, proper nutrition, and light—she dramatically reduced the death rate from infectious diseases from over 40% to approximately 2%. After the war, she established the first secular nursing school at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, professionalizing the field.
Significance in Nursing: Nightingale is significant because she was the first nursing theorist to articulate that nursing is a distinct, professional discipline separate from medicine. She established the empirical link between a patient's environment and their health outcomes, providing the initial evidence-based foundation for nursing practice, long before the germ theory was fully accepted. Her work shifted the focus of care from simply tending the sick to actively manipulating the patient's surroundings to facilitate natural healing.
Basic Concept Analysis
Nightingale's Environmental Theory is based on the premise that nursing's primary role is to manipulate the patient's environment to restore them to health and prevent disease.
Major Concepts
The theory is built upon the interconnectedness of five core concepts, which she referred to as "Canons" or fundamental necessities for health.
Sample Answer
Nightingale's Environmental Theory
Background of the Theorist
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was a British social reformer and the founder of modern nursing.
Education: She received formal nursing training in 1851 at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserwerth, Germany. Despite societal expectations for women of her class, she dedicated her life to nursing and sanitation reform.