Nursing theory

· Chapter 6: Overview of Grand Nursing Theories

· Chapter 10: Introduction to Middle Range Nursing Theories

There are global areas of knowledge in professional nursing that provide an organizing structure to theory and knowledge development. Nursing is organized by a metaparadigm, which consists of four concepts that define the discipline. The concepts within a metaparadigm help to form a central focus of the nursing discipline. Another way of thinking about this is that a dominant metaparadigm helps form the world view of a discipline (Parker & Smith, 2015). Research, theory, and practice are oriented around this dominant way of thinking about the discipline’s world.

Reflection

Think about it

Look at the theories in your text, think about the many concepts in those theories, and reflect on the values, beliefs, and principles that were part of your nursing education and are part of your nursing practice. All of these make up the dominant metaparadigm of nursing (Parker & Smith, 2015).

Within any profession, there must be a consensus about the concepts of the metaparadigm. For a nursing theory to comprehensively reflect the profession of nursing, each of the key concepts must be addressed, explained, and applied to practice. In doing so, research ideas may be generated, resulting in knowledge development. Once the metaparadigm concepts are agreed upon, theory and knowledge development have organization or a central theme.

Several nursing theorists developed different variations of terms and concepts for the metaparadigm. For professional nursing, consensus in the literature identifies person, environment, health, and nursing as being the concepts within our metaparadigm (Parker & Smith, 2015). This is the most commonly accepted metaparadigm and was initially developed by Fawcett in 1978 and revised in later years.

Metaparadigm Click each term and review the definition

Nursing Person Health Environment

Background

Jaqueline Fawcett, RN, PhD, ScD (hon), FAAN, ANEF was the original theorist who identified the nursing metaparadigm. What follows is an interview with Dr. Fawcett conducted on July 2011 by a professor of nursing as part of a learning activity for an online nursing course.

The Interview

Rebecca Lee (RL): Would you please share with the students your own educational pathway to nursing?

Jacqueline Fawcett (JF): I earned a baccalaureate degree in nursing in 1964, a master’s degree in parent-child nursing with a minor in nursing education in 1970, and a PhD in nursing in 1976.

RL: What originally inspired you to develop the metaparadigm concepts?

JF: I was asked to present a paper, “The What of Theory Development,” at a conference sponsored by the National League for Nursing in 1977 (Fawcett, 1978). Viewed through the lens of Kuhn’s (1970) work on the structure of scientific revolutions, Dubin’s (1969) idea of the central concepts of a discipline became nursing’s central concepts, which evolved into the concepts of the metaparadigm of nursing (Fawcett, 2005).

RL: How did these concepts influence the discipline of nursing, both at the time of creation and in the years since?

JF: The metaparadigm concepts, indeed the very idea of a metaparadigm of nursing, influences nurses’ understanding of what nursing is, and especially their understanding that nursing is an intellectual discipline and not only skills used in the care of people who are sick. I believe that a considerable amount of nurse burnout could be reduced if nurses took the time to step back from their concrete clinic