Virginia Henderson Essay

944 Words4 Pages
Virginia Henderson
Brooke Beikmann and Mallory Backstrom
Fort Hays State University

Virginia Henderson Theory is defined as the systematic abstraction of reality that serves some type of purpose, usually including sets of concepts, definitions, and propositions. Nursing theories are known to evolve instead of being purposely made. “Nursing theories are the creative products of nurses who seek to thoughtfully describe the many aspects of nursing in ways that could be studied, evaluated, and used by other nurses” (Sitzman & Eichelberger, 2011). Virginia Henderson’s theory will help to explain the different concepts of nursing and how they are critiqued.
“Virginia Henderson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on November 20, 1897. Henderson was the fifth of eight children of Lucy Abbot Henderson and Daniel B. Henderson and was a descendant of a long line of scholars and educators. In 1901, the family relocated to Virginia where Henderson grew into adulthood. In 1918, she entered the Army School of Nursing in Washington, D.C., and received her diploma in 1921” (American Nurses Association, 2012).
Shortly after receiving her diploma, Henderson worked for her Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in nursing from Teachers College, Columbia University and began teaching immediately. In 1934, she became a part of the staff at Teachers College and taught for fourteen years. “During that period, she revised Bertha Harmer’s Textbook of the Principles and Practice of Nursing, which was published in 1939 and has been widely adopted by schools of nursing” (American Nurses Association, 2012).
In 1953, Henderson switched roles from teaching to becoming a research associate at Yale University School of Nursing. She worked on a project that was constructed to survey and assesses the status of nursing research in the United States. Henderson was named research

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