Assignment task:
Q1. What is nursing theory? Discuss the significance of nursing theory in relation to nursing as a discipline and as a profession.
Q2. Based on Virginia Henderson's definition of nursing, do you agree or disagree with this definition? Why or why not? Develop or describe your definition of nursing.
Virginia Henderson viewed the patient as an individual who requires help toward achieving independence and completeness or wholeness of mind and body. She clarified the practice of nursing as independent from the practice of physicians and acknowledged her interpretation of the nurse's role as a synthesis of many influences. Her work is based on (1) Edward L. Thorndike, an American psychologist; (2) her experiences with the Henry House Visiting Nurse Agency; (3) experience in rehabilitation nursing; and (4) Orlando's conceptualization of deliberate nursing action (Henderson, 1964; Orlando, 1961).
Henderson emphasized the art of nursing and proposed 14 basic human needs on which nursing care is based. Her contributions include defining nursing, delineating autonomous nursing functions, stressing goals of interdependence for the patient, and creating self-help concepts. Her self-help concepts influenced the works of Abdellah and Adam (Abdellah et al., 1960; Adam, 1980, 1991).
Henderson made extraordinary contributions to nursing during her 60 years of service as a nurse, teacher, author, and researcher, and she published extensively throughout those years. Henderson wrote three books that have become nursing classics: Textbook of the Principles and Practice of Nursing (1955), Basic Principles of Nursing Care (1960), and The Nature of Nursing (1966). Her major contribution to nursing research was an 11-year Yale-sponsored Nursing Studies Index Project published as a four-volume annotated index of nursing's biographical, analytical, and historical literature from 1900 to 1959.
In 1958 the nursing service committee of the International Council of Nurses (ICN) asked Henderson to describe her concept of nursing. This now-historical definition, published by the ICN in 1961, represented her final crystallization on the subject:
"The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will, or knowledge; and to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible."
(Henderson, 1964, p. 63)
Henderson's definition of nursing was adopted subsequently by the ICN and disseminated widely; it continues to be used worldwide. In The Nature of Nursing: A Definition and Its Implications for Practice, Research, and Education, Henderson (1966) proposed 14 basic needs upon which nursing care is based.