Hi fellow nurses. I'm a Clinical Nurse Educator (CNE) in Mental Health in a major Australian hospital in Melbourne. For many years now I have felt frustrated by what seems to me to be a loss of direction for nurses. I completed my degree course in New Zealand around the year 2000 and was taught about several different nursing theories/models (the terms seem to be faily interchangeable for the most part...) Peplau was the most significant for the mental health nurses (of course), but there were Orem's Self-Care Deficit, there was Callista Roy, Jean Watson, Newman, Neuman, Leininger, Erikson - so the list goes on.
There's a lot of talk about Evidence Based Practice, these days. But I'm wondering, how do we instil the value of this in our nursing colleagues, especially the beginner practitioners, if we don't give them somewhere to ground their practice? Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but it seems to me if you're not basing (aka grounding) your practice in a nursing model, then you're practising medical model, by default!
I'm wondering how others feel? Is it just me that feels this loss? Do we need to bring some sense of ownership of our nursing practice back? If not, how do we regain and retain our professionalism and sense of who we are and what we do as nurses, if we can't articulate this in some form of framework or structure? Why has it disappeared? What have we replaced it with (if anything) and is this working?
Please share your thoughts and feelings on this subject. Sometimes I feel like a lost voice in the wilderness and wonder if there's some giant factor that I'm completely missing...???
I've never seen the light when it comes to Nursing theory, although it's great that you get some benefit from them, can you give some examples of how your practice has been effected by Nursing theory?
For me it's hard to critique Nursing theory because it's hard to evaluate the effectiveness of something when you don't even understand it's purpose in the first place. Nursing theory supposedly helps to define Nursing as the independent profession that it is, which makes no sense since it is not an independent profession; never will be, and we need to learn to be OK with that.
Second, it's not "theory", it's philosophy/ideology/priniciples/values/etc, but it's not theory. As a group with some connection to Science let's have some respect for the term "theory" and use it appropriately. I realize the term gets muddled by folks like Freud, although Freud was in no way a scientist. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard.
If Nursing theory is supposed to help define Nursing for those outside of Nursing, I don't think that a thesis project that appears to have been written while on way too much acid that completely fails to capture that majority of what Nurses do accurately is the best way sell ourselves to the Public.
And it all makes sense now.
:rolleyes:I don't do acid, thats why I can't get along with the "nursing theory" lovers.
Kinda like how Pink Floyd sounds different when..........well, ya know:cool:
I wouldnt know, just heard it through the grape vine. Maybe some theory lovers can tell us if it sounds different when you drop one.
eriksoln, BSN, RN
2,636 Posts
:rolleyes:I don't do acid, thats why I can't get along with the "nursing theory" lovers.
Kinda like how Pink Floyd sounds different when..........well, ya know:cool:
I wouldnt know, just heard it through the grape vine. Maybe some theory lovers can tell us if it sounds different when you drop one.