Concept Comparison and Analysis Across Theories

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Concept Comparison and Analysis across Theories Lori Hamilton NUR/513 October 14, 2013 Georgia Swank Concept Comparison and Analysis across Theories As a profession, nursing theorists have come up with different theories that support and guide nursing practice. This paper will discuss the role of nursing in both Virginia Henderson’s Need Theory and Dorothea Orem’s Self Care Theory. The premise of each theory is the nurse will care for the patient until the patient can care for his or her self. By comparing and analyzing each theory, one will be able to get a better understanding of how to best apply the nursing theory in practice. In both, Henderson’s Need Theory and Orem’s Self Care Theory, the ‘role of nursing’ is the core concept. Henderson considered her definition of nursing her ‘concept.’ She defined nursing as, “assisting individuals to gain independence in relation to the performance of activities contributing to health or its recovery,” according to (“Current Nursing: Virginia Henderson’s Need Theory”, 2012). Orem defined nursing as, “actions deliberately selected and performed by nurses to help individuals or groups under their care to maintain or change conditions in themselves or their environments,” (Current Nursing: “Dorothea Orem’s Self Care Theory,” 2012). For both theories, the major assumption is that the nurse will care for the patient until the patient or his or her family can care for the patient. According to the Free Dictionary (2013), a metaparadigm is, “a set of concepts and propositions that sets for the phenomena with which a discipline is concerned.” In both theories, there are metaparadigms that have developed the framework for nursing practice. Virginia Henderson In Henderson’s theory,

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