How do nurses use theory in nursing practice?
Nurses have been using theories from other disciplines for a long time. Erikson’s Theory of Human Development is a common example. More recently, nursing theories have been developed to organize the tremendous volume of new information being generated. A theory is an organizing framework for “thinking nursing” in patient care situations. A theory assists the nurse to explain, describe or predict patient care events and assists in communicating these events clearly. Without a theory in practice, nursing can become a task-oriented process. If a theory explains nursing situations, why are there so many different theories about nursing? Nursing is distinguished from other disciplines such as medicine or psychology in that their identified concerns are different. The metaparadigm elements of nursing are person, environment, health and nursing.(Fawcett, 1984) These elements are interpreted in a unique manner by each nursing theorist. Peplau focused on the stages of the nurse-patient relation
