ALMARIO, Ryneil M.

MAN 203

Theoretical Foundations in Nursing Faye Glenn Abdellah

Nursing is based on an art and science that mould the attitudes, intellectual competencies, and technical skills of the individual nurse into the desire and ability to help people, sick or well, cope with their health needs. Faye Glenn Abdellah (Nursing Theories, 2010)

i.

BIOGRAPHY Born on March 13, 1919 in New York City. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Fitkin Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Neptune, New Jersey in 1942 (now Ann May School of Nursing). She obtained her Bachelor of Science in 1945, her Master of Arts in 1947, her Doctor of Education in 1955 from the Teachers Colleges at Columbia. She was appointed Chief Nurse Officer of the U.S Public Health Service (USPHS) in 1970 and served that position in 17 years. First woman to serve as Deputy Surgeon General of the United States. She was inducted into the US National Womens Hall of Fame in 2000 due to her contributions in the field of Education and Nursing Research She has been a staff nurse, a head nurse, a faculty member at Yale University and Columbia University A public health nurse, and an author of more than 150 articles and books. She has been a research consultant to the World Health Organization. She is a recipient of more than 79 academic honors and professional awards in her excellence in Nursing. She developed a list of 21 unique nursing problems related to human needs. Recognized as one of the countrys leading and best known researchers in health and public policy and as an international expert of health problems.

ii.

CONCEPTS OF THE NURSING THEORIST A. Man Abdellah describes people as having physical, emotional, and sociological needs. These needs may overt, consisting of largely physical needs, or covert, such as emotional and social needs. Patient is described as the only justification for the existence of nursing. People are helped by the identification and alleviation of the problems they are experiencing. By resolving each problem, the person returns to a healthy state or a state in which he or she can cope; therefore the ideal holism is absent in this model. All persons have self-help ability and the capacity to learn, both of which vary from one individual to another. Individuals (and families) are the recipients of nursing. Health, or achieving of it, is the purpose of nursing services.

B. Nursing Nursing is a helping profession. Nursing care is doing something to or for the person or providing information to the person with the goals of meeting needs, increasing or restoring self-help ability, or alleviating impairment. Nursing process is viewed as problem solving and the correct identification of nursing problems is of paramount concern. The role of the nurse in health promotion is limited to circumstances of anticipated impairment. It is important for nurses to know about prevention and rehabilitation. Nursing is broadly grouped into the 21 problem areas to guide care and promote use of nursing judgment. She considers nursing to be comprehensive service that is based on art and science and aims to help people, sick or well, cope with their health needs.

C. Health

In Patient -Centered Approaches to Nursing, Abdellah describes health as a state mutually exclusive of illness.

Abdellah implicitly defined health as a state when the individual has no unmet needs and no anticipated or actual impairments.

Abdellah speaks of total health needs and a healthy state of mind and body in her description of nursing as a comprehensive service.

Supports the holistic approach to patient-centered care and the need to lend greater attention to environmental factors.

D. Environment Society is included in planning for optimum health on local, state, national, and international levels. Nursing problem 17, from the typology, is to create and/or maintain a therapeutic environment. If the nurses reaction to the patient is hostile or negative, the atmosphere in the room may be hostile or negative. This suggests that patients interact with and respond to their environment and the nurse is part of that environment. However, as she further delineated her ideas, the focus of nursing service is clearly the individual. The environment is the home or community from which patient comes.

(Tomey & Alligood, 2002)