Conceptual Theoretical Nursing Paper
This paper intends to explore the concept of nursing theory. Mainly, it analyses the Fawcett’s conceptual and theoretical structures to develop a conceptual theoretical model that is significant for the nursing practice in today’s advance world.Conceptual Theoretical Nursing Paper
Moreover, it discusses the role of nursing and the importance of the nursing field. To have a deep rooted insight of this concept, this paper explores that how an individual and environment interact with each other and a view point is laid down on the importance of health and its relations with illness.
Discussion
Fawcett’s Conceptual -Theoretical Structure
Theories and conceptual models are not really new to nursing practice. There have been such theories since Nightingale in 1859 who first proposed his ideas about nursing. So as Nightingale had his own ideas of nursing, all nurses have their own image of nursing practice and this influence the decisions and guide the actions nurses take (Butts & Rich, 2011).Conceptual Theoretical Nursing Paper
However, these global ideas of what we understand by nursing has been organized by Fawcett (1996) through what he calls “knowledge structure”, which places the metaparadigm, philosophies, conceptual models, theory and empirical indicators of a structure down linking the abstract to the concrete world.
Metaparadigm is referred to the global concepts of the phenomenon of interest discipline of nursing, person, health and environment, which have been conceptualized differently by different nurses to result in the generation of conceptual models (Meleis, 2011).
The difference between a model and a theory is the level of development. The theories show less extensive than the models and are more concrete in their level of abstraction. They focus on the development of theoretical statements to answer questions, which are specific to nursing (Meleis, 2011).Conceptual Theoretical Nursing Paper
Theories are a set of interrelated concepts that help describe, explain and predict the phenomenon of interest for the nursing discipline, therefore become an element essential to professional practice, and to facilitate the way to describe and explain and predict the phenomenon of nursing care. Both conceptual models and theories and concepts are developed by Fawcett (1996) and further defined as words that describe mental images of phenomena, not limited to a group and individual situation in particular.
To understand and study these theoretical concepts, it is necessary to use empirical indicators, which are the real instruments. Experimental conditions and procedures used to observe or measure the concepts of a theory linking these abstract world with the world specifically, are the only way to connect the theoretical with the practical. It is important to know that each theory studies a limited aspect of reality (Alligood, 2010). Therefore, many theories needed to study all phenomena related to nursing care. Not all models and theories are applied to all situations in which this involved nursing, but only a small part of all the phenomena of interest is for nursing.Conceptual Theoretical Nursing Paper