Nursing Theory Comparison rough draft Health, Medicine Research Paper

Nursing Theory Comparison
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Nursing Theory Comparison
Nursing theories reflect the needs of nurses at the time of their development. They explain the role of the nurses in creating an environment where there is a high likelihood of optimizing the patient output. Virginia Henderson, between 1955 up to 1966, came up with a nursing theory heavily borrowing concepts from the Abraham Maslow hierarchy of mass needs; thus, a nurse competency gets shaped universally depending on the patient's requirement to attain independence. She wanted to define nursing as a separate discipline with its philosophical underpinnings distinct from other medical health disciplines. However, from Henderson's theory, the synergy model was developed, and it emphasized the importance of the cordial relationship between the patient and the nurse in enhancing achieving patient needs. Usually, integrating the nursing theories into real-life practice is a challenge to many nurses. As a result, this essay presents a nursing theory comparison between the Virginia Henderson nursing theory and the synergy model in terms of their philosophical underpinnings, significant assumptions, concepts, and their clinical application.
Background of the theories
According to a nursing theory by Virginia Henderson, a nurse's core duty is to create an enabling environment where the patient can gain independence. Therefore, the nurse should empower and prepare the patient for life after discharge from the hospital. In her argument, she listed 14 components of the areas cutting across physiological, social, spiritual, and psychological dimensions where the nurse should assist the patient. In other words, the nurse plays three significant roles in a patient's life as; a substitute where they do responsibilities that otherwise a healthy patient would do on their own, supplementary, or works in a complementary mode where they work in solidarity with the patient. Whereas the Synergy model stresses that patient and their family needs contribute to universally shaping the nurses' competencies. In other words, there should be a cordial relationship between the patient and the nurse to enhance the nursing practice in achieving optimal patient outcomes. The relationship should be mutual, where both play their genuine part in achieving the common medical goal of enhanced service to the patient. Therefore, the nurse is a professional who must devise ways of bonding with the patient to enhance open conversation where there is a positive feedback mechanism. The patient can only open up when there is a sense of involvement and compassion from the nurse in charge.
Philosophical underpinnings of the theories
Henderson's theory anchors in four major concepts: the individual, environment, health, and nursing. Consequently, the individual possesses those 14 needs that are essential for good health. Since the individual cannot attain all the basic requirements, there is a need for assistance to regain their ability to act independently to acquire the necessities. The individual possesses a mind and a soul that is interrelated and require holistic physiological, spiritual, psychological, and social fulfillment. The various dimensions that contribute to a holistic state of a human being must be in harmony to fasten the maximum patient output. For a patient to acquire the basic 14 highlighted requirements, the nurse should focus not only on the medication but also on the patient's spiritual balance in the specific faith they conform and the introduction of relevant social activities such as various games.
Conversely, for the synergy model to achieve maximum patient output, there should be a significant interaction between the patient and the nurse, forming a link between the psychological and social domains (Rusk et al., 2018). Therefore, the philosophical underpinning of the synergy model tends to emphasize bond creation. Once there exist a mutual relationship between the nurse and the patient, the patient will adhere to medication instructions and feel cared for, thus facilitating the recovery process. If there is a synergy between the nurse and the patient, there is a high likelihood of patient recovery. Therefore, the patient should strive to ensure that they regain their health by inquiring from the nurse about safe practices that they should engage in to enhance their health.
Major assumptions
Henderson's theory's significant assumptions include failure to explicitly explain how nurses will achieve the target of caring for the clients until they gain full recovery. Besides, the view expects nurses to dedicate their tome day and night towards caring for the patients. The theory expects that nurses should study both arts and sciences at the university level. There is no connection to how human physiological needs are correlated to other human characteristics and holistic expression of human nature. Additionally, there is no explicit explanation of the link of the 14 characteristics prioritized, limiting their full comprehension. Equally, there is no vivid description of the nurse's role in ensuring that the patient undergoes peaceful death. According to Henderson, there is an assumption that a nurse's primary function is to fill the gap in the patient life hence help the patient do those activities that they did without assistance when in good health (Pinheiro et al., 2016). In reality, the role is not practical since the massive gap in nurse to patient ratio leading to nurses' huge workload does not accord them the required time to find out the patient's needs exhaustively. She further postulates that nurses must be ready to help people die peacefully. At times, some people may die without the nurse's attention since they may be performing other duties at that time.
On the other hand, the synergy model failed to highlight the factors that facilitate older patients' vulnerability. Studies indicate that an individuals' vulnerability to potential stressors increases as one age (Hardin, 2015). For example, as one age, the rate of cardiac muscle ability to pump blood within the body lowers the blood flow rate to the rest of the body organs, leading to slow metabolic rate and homeostatic waste elimination from the body. Consequently, nurses need to have preferential treatment to older people to avert any stressor that may lead to undesired patient outcomes. Equally, the synergy model assumes that all nurses will create a bond between them and the patients without stressing on the individual differences; hence some nurses may not be willing to probe further non-cooperating patients.
Concepts
Henderson's theory focuses on emphasis on patient needs. As a result, to ensure that they meet the patient's needs, nurses develop their competencies to promote them from one rank to the other from competent to experts. The main concepts highlighted by Henderson included individual, environment, health, and nursing. An individual is a person who has gone to the health facility to get assistance to be independent or to a peaceful death. On the other hand, the environment refers to the external factors that have an appreciable impact on determining the patient outcome. Health refers to the ability of an individual to regain the 14 primary attributes associated with good health. While nursing refers to the nurses who interact with the patients to discharge professional medical care. Equally, the theory anchors postulate that the mind and body are inseparable hence the need for nurses to create harmony for a patient to have high chances of getting maximum independence. Nursing has drawn its domain from a wide-based spectrum in other disciplines like biology, psychology, and medicine; hence every nurse practices a set of theories in their daily interactions with the patients (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019). Therefore, a nurse should be open to read widely and attend regular nursing career updates to remain informed on the field's current developments. The subsets of the concept are the 14 necessary functions in which nurse assistance to the patient is essential. They include the ability to move, dress, breathe, accomplish set goals, participate in social activities, have an average body temperature, connect to one's faith, cause harm to other people, and be able to eat drink. In other words, the nurse in charge must ensure that the patient can perform the above functions through the assistance.
However, the Synergy model establishes the nurse-patient, nurse-nurse, and nurse-system relationship's critical parameters, creating a conducive environment for the patient's utmost care. The model attempts to explain the unique characteristics that patients and their families contribute to the nursing practice in changing health to illness. The eight patient characteristics emphasized include resiliency, vulnerability, and stability, among others. Vulnerability refers to the patient's ability to withstand real and probable stressors that may influence patient care's maximum output (Hardin, 2015). Besides, it highlights nurse competencies in a continuum that l...