Nursing Theories: Grand Theories and Community Empowerment

This essay examines nursing theories, focusing on Carper's patterns of nursing knowledge (empirics, ethics, esthetics, and personal) and their application in a registered nurse's work life on a medical-surgical floor. The author provides specific examples of how these patterns influence their practice, such as maintaining clean environments and respecting patient rights. The essay also discusses the role of nursing philosophy, paradigm, metaparadigm, conceptual models, and theories in guiding nursing practice. Furthermore, it explores the Uncertainty in Illness Theory and the Theory of Community Empowerment, including their authors, major concepts, and previous applications. The author references relevant literature to support their analysis, providing a comprehensive overview of nursing theories and their practical implications in healthcare.

Running head: NURSING THEORIES 1
NURSING THEORIES.
Author’s name
Institutional Affiliation

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1.
Empirics involve the use of objectives, abstract and general knowledge that can be
measured and verified through repeated tests over a given period(Zander, 2007). In nursing, such
objectives, abstracts, and general knowledge are often guided by the use of nursing theories,
principles, and models(Zander, 2007). The use of empirics has influenced my nursing profession
in understanding various concepts of wound care such as maintaining clean environments and
hand hygiene to prevent infections through the use of nursing theories and experience. According
to Carper, ethics is choosing, justifying and judging actions regarding rights, moral duties and
obligations(Zander, 2007). On the surgical floor, I have committed myself to provide patients
with quality and safe care and respect their rights following the nursing code of ethics. Esthetic
requires a nurse caring for a given patient to interpret and understand a patient’s behaviors as a
whole(Zander, 2007). I have utilized the concepts of esthetics by trying to understand the bigger
picture of the patient's situations using wholly nursing care on the surgical floor to attend to
patients’ spiritual, psychological, emotional and physical needs. Personal knowledge involves a
person’s self-awareness and others to create concrete, subjective and existential
relationships(Zander, 2007). I have utilized this concept to understand other nurses and self to
avoid conflicts during nursing care.
2.
A nursing philosophy is an individual attitude and perspective that he or she believes
about his or her purpose and objectives in pursuing nursing education and practice(Marchuk,
2014). Additionally,nursing philosophy involves how a person perceives the nursing profession
and the reasons behind participation in every action in the nursing field(Marchuk, 2014). On the
hand, the nursing paradigm is an individual’s way of looking at natural phenomena that

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constitute several philosophical assumptions and that guide a nurses’ approach to the inquiry
whereas nursing metaparadigm is a group of statements or a statement that identify its
relationships to a given phenomenon (Nikfarid, Hekmat, Vedad, & Rajabi, 2018). The nursing
metaparadigm has four major concepts that are associated and have a different meaning which
includes environment, person, health and nursing(Nikfarid et al., 2018). In nursing, a conceptual
model is composed of theoretical linkages and concepts which both try to describe a given
relationship between two or more concepts(Parker & Smith, 2015). Propositions connect
concepts and theories either by the use of mathematical or verbal statements. Finally, nursing
theory is a group of related ideas and concepts that guide nursing practice through a proposed set
of actions(Parker & Smith, 2015).
3.
Uncertainty in illness theory was first developed by Mishel in 1981 which provides a
conceptual framework that explains how uncertainty in nursing practice is generated and how
they psychologically adjust to the illness experience(Zhang, 2017). The researchers and nurses
have used the theory of uncertainty in illness to develop and test uncertainty management
strategies in various populations specifically in patients with cancer and other chronic
illness(Zhang, 2017). Rothman provided a theoretical perspective of community empowerment
in 1968 which comprises three models of community organizing (Parasuraman & Manish, n.d.).
The three models or community organizing include the social planning model, social action
model, and locality development model. The key concepts of these models included the use of
democracy, cooperation, self-help, community leadership and educational
objectives(Parasuraman & Manish, n.d.). This model has been used to integrate theories into
practice and reflect and discuss the process of community work.

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References.
Marchuk, A. (2014). A personal nursing philosophy in practice. Journal of Neonatal Nursing.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnn.2014.06.004
Nikfarid, L., Hekmat, N., Vedad, A., & Rajabi, A. (2018). The main nursing metaparadigm
concepts in human caring theory and Persian mysticism: A comparative study. Journal of
Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, 11.
Parasuraman, S., & Manish, K. (n.d.). Jack Rothman’s models of community practice. Society.
Parker, M. E., & Smith, M. C. (2015). Nursing Theories and Nursing Practice. In F. A. Davis
Company, Philadelphia. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0703993104
Zander, P. (2007). Ways of Knowing in Nursing: The Historical Evolution of a Concept. Journal
of Theory Construction and Testing, 11(1), 7.
Zhang, Y. (2017). Uncertainty in illness: Theory review, application, and extension. Oncology
Nursing Forum, 44(6), 645–649. https://doi.org/10.1188/17.ONF.645-649