KEY CONCEPTS:
Faye Abdellah proposed a
classificatory framework for identifying nursing problems, based on her idea
that nursing is basically oriented to meeting an individual client’s total
health needs. Her major effort was to differentiate nursing from medicine and
disease orientation. Abdellah’s patient-centered approach
to nursing was developed inductively from her practice and is considered a
human needs theory. Although it was intended to guide care of those in the hospital,
it also has relevance for nursing care in community settings. Abdellah was
clearly promoting the image of the nurse who was not only kind and caring, but
also intelligent, competent, and technically well prepared to provide service
to the patient.
ABDELLAH'S TYPOLOGY OF 21 NURSING PROBLEMS:
1. To maintain good hygiene and physical comfort.
2. To promote optimal activity: exercise, rest, and sleep.
3. To promote safety through prevention of accident, injury,
or other trauma and through the prevention of the spread of infection.
4. To maintain good body mechanics and prevent and
correct deformity.
5. To facilitate the maintenance of a supply of oxygen
to all body cells.
6. To facilitate the maintenance of nutrition of all body
cells.
7. To facilitate the maintenance of elimination.
8. To facilitate the maintenance of fluid and electrolyte
balance.
9. To recognize the physiological responses of the body
to disease conditions, pathological, physiological, and compensatory.
10. To facilitate the maintenance of regulatory
mechanisms and functions.
11. To facilitate the maintenance of sensory
function.
12. To identify and accept positive and negative
expressions, feelings, and reactions.
13. To identify and accept interrelatedness of emotions
and organic illness.
14. To facilitate the maintenance of effective
verbal and nonverbal communication.
15. To promote the development of productive
interpersonal relationships.
16. To facilitate progress toward achievement of personal
spiritual goals
17. To create and/or maintain a therapeutic environment.
18. To facilitate awareness of self as an individual
with varying physical, emotional, and developmental needs.
19. To accept the optimum possible goals in the light of
limitations, physical, and emotional.
20. To use community resources as an aid in resolving
problems arising from illness.
21. To understand the role of social problems as influencing
factors in the cause of illness
These
21 nursing problems became the base of Abdellah’s base theory. These were her work together w/ Levine in
1954 by using the work of several studies , they classified medical diagnoses
in small hospitals into 58 categories.
They were also helped by 40 schools of nursing in the development of the
base theory.
References:
George Julia B. Nursing theories: The base of professional
nursing practice 3rd edition. Norwalk, CN: Appleton and Lange; 1990.
George, J. (2002). Nursing Theories: The Base for
Professional Nursing Practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
