Paper has me stumped: advantages/disadvantages of nursing theory

[Stearnsy]

I am an associate's degree CCRN back for BSN so I can open some new doors. Totally online, 17months, and at the state college I received my ADN from.

Prompt is "list the advantages and disadvantages of using nursing theory to guide nursing practice." I am totally stumped, not by the "advantages" part, as this seems obvious to me; nursing theories provide nurses with a framework and structure on which to base their practice. Before the 1950's or so, nursing education was based primarily in hospital-kept procedure manuals and seen as an auxiliary component to the medical profession before entering academia and developing into an independent profession.

The major disadvantage to nursing theory, as I am finding, is that many of them are very complex and abstract, causing many students (like me!!!) to have an aversion to them. I want to explain how theories are not applicable to all walks of nursing practice, like same day surgery, pacu, etc. where nurses see their patients for a very limited amount of time--but I am having difficulty in "backing it up" with references. What are disadvantages?. My thinking is too focused--I love math and science..concrete, provable things..theory causes me major brain constipation. Please help if you would be so generous to share some nursing brainpower with me!

I have the 2008-9 Catalano textbook, which to me, is completely useless really. I have access to EBSCO and CINAHL, also have used nursingcenter but search has not been working for me lately.

TIA,

Stearnsy, RN

[ImThatGuy, BSN, RN]

I would say the disadvantage to using the nursing theories is that they are not concrete and based on math and science, and are in my opinion fluffiness that exists only in attempt for nursing to identify itself as a profession all to its own. Sure, someone may have dabbled with a few statistics to make a quantitative study, but it's hardly scientific as say physio, patho, pharm, etc. Perhaps something along that line of thinking....?