Theoretical Foundations of Nursing and Nursing Ethics Flashcards
Her theory was founded on her belief that nursing could improve a patient’s environment to facilitate recovery and prevent complications.
Florence Nightingale
An application of this theory is to have nurses assist with 14 identified activities e.g. breathing, eating/drinking, elimination, movement/positioning etc. until the patients can meet these needs for themselves.
Virginia Henderson’s Nursing Needs Theory
This theory emphasizes the role of the nurse in assisting patients who cannot care for themselves. When applying this theory. the nurse continually assesses a patient’s ability to perform self-care and intervenes as needed to ensure patients meet physical, psychological, sociological and developmental needs.
Dorothea Orem’s Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory
The focus of this theory is interpersonal relations among a nurse, a patient, and a patient’s family and developing the nurse-patient relationship.
Hildegard Peplau’s Interpersonal Theory
An assumption of this theory is that human caring varies among cultures in its expressions, processes, and patterns. Social structures such as a patient’s politics, culture, and traditions also affects care and influences a patient’s health and illness patterns.
Madeleine Leininger’s Culture Care Theory
In this theory, the patient as a person is viewed as being more important their disease. A patient is viewed as a collection of subsystems that form an overall behavioral system focused on meeting basic drives such as elimination, ingestion, affiliation. The goal of nursing is to help the patient attain/maintain balance and stability in each subsystem.
Dorothy Johnson’s Behavioural System Model
This theory views the patient as being an open system that is in constant energy exchange with both internal and external environments. The goal of nursing care is stress management: helping patients cope with intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extra-personal stressors that can break through the patient’s line of defense and cause illness.
Betty Neuman: Neuman Systems Model
This theory identifies 21 “nursing problems” to meet patient’s physical, psychological, and social needs. Nurses should strive to know each patient and provide a personalized plan of care.
Abdellah’s Patient-Centred Care Model
This theory focuses on the dynamic interaction between nurses and patients to achieve mutually set health goals. It emphasizes communication, perception, and transaction as key elements in the nurse-patient relationship.
Imogene King’s Goal Attainment Theory
It views patients as adaptive systems that respond to changes in their environment, aiming to achieve balance or adaptation. The theory emphasizes the role of nurses in assessing and enhancing patients’ adaptive responses.
Sister Callista Roy: Roy’s Adaptation Model
This theory emphasizes the importance of compassion, empathy, and human connection in nursing. It focuses on treating patients holistically by addressing their physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs, rather than solely focusing on their medical conditions.
Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring/Caring Model
Jean Watson’s identified 10 carative factors that have later evolved into the Caritas Processes. Name at least 3 of these carative factors.
HUMAN CARES
Humanistic-altruistic values
Understanding of faith and hope
Mindfulness in cultivating sensitivity
Authentic helping-trusting relationships
Nonjudgmental acceptance of feelings
Critical thinking for scientific problem-solving
Active teaching-learning support
Respect for supportive and healing environments
Encouraging fulfillment of human needs
Spiritual acknowledgment of existential forces
This theory viewed humans as energy fields in constant interaction with the environment. It emphasizes the holistic nature of human beings and their interconnectedness with the universe. The focus of nursing is to promote harmony between individuals and their environment, and recognizing the importance of patterns and energy fields in health and healing.
Martha Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings
This theory focuses on the individual’s lived experience and their unique perspective on health. It emphasizes the human-universe relationship as a mutual process. Nurses should respect patient’s choices and help them find meaning in their health experience.
Rosemarie Rizzo Parse - Human Becoming Theory
This theory believes that health is not merely the absence of disease. It views health and illness as part of the same continuum and emphasizes personal growth through life experiences.
Margaret Newman: Health as Expanding Consciousness
This theorist proposed the steps in which nurses acquire skills from novice to expert.
Patricia Benner: From Novice to Expert theory
This theory emphasizes addressing patients’ physical, emotional, environmental, and sociocultural comfort needs through relief, ease, and transcendence. It provides a structured nursing framework to improve overall well-being and patient satisfaction.
Katharine Kolcaba’s Comfort Theory
It emphasizes that a patient’s personal characteristics, experiences, and beliefs affect motivation for adopting healthy behaviors.
Pender’s Health Promotion Model
Name the ethical principle:
A nurse who informs a patient about the risks and benefits of a treatment, allowing them to decide whether to proceed or not.
Autonomy: Respecting a patient’s right to make their own decisions about their healthcare.
Name the ethical principle:
Providing pain relief to a patient in distress, even if it requires adjusting their treatment plan.
Beneficence: The duty to do good to others and maintain a balance between benefits and harms.
This is an undesirable outcome where the health care provider decides what is best for the client and encourages the client to act against their own choices.
Paternalism
Name the ethical principle:
Double-checking medication dosages to prevent accidental overdose.
Non-maleficence: The obligation to do or cause no harm to another.
Name the ethical principle:
Ensuring that all patients in a busy emergency room receive care based on the severity of their condition, not their social status.
Justice: The equitable distribution of potential benefits and tasks should be considered when determining the order in which clients should be care for
Name the ethical principle:
Following through on a commitment to update a patient on test results as soon as they are available, even when having a very busy shift.
Fidelity: Being loyal, keeping promises, and maintaining trust with patients.
Name the ethical principle:
Telling a patient the truth about a medical error and explaining the steps being taken to address it.
Veracity: Being honest and transparent with patients.
A person who speaks up or acts on the behalf of a patient while protecting the client’s rights to make their own decisions.
Advocate
This occurs when there is a conflict between two or more ethical principles.
Ethical dilemma
This refers to a judgment about behaviour, based on specific beliefs.
Morals
This is a term used to refer to a willingness to respect and follow through on one’s professional obligations.
Responsibility
A nurse administers the wrong medication to a patient due to a misunderstanding of the prescription. Instead of hiding the mistake, the nurse promptly informs the patient, the healthcare team, and their supervisor. The nurse is showing:
Accountability
What ethical approach is shown below?
A nurse refuses to participate in assisted euthanasia because they believe it violates their professional duty to preserve life, even if the patient requests it.
Deontology
This is an ethical approach that emphasizes duty and adherence to rules or principles. It focuses on the morality of actions themselves, rather than their consequences.
What ethical approach is shown below?
During an outbreak, the nurse vaccinates individuals who are most at risk of spreading the disease—such as healthcare workers and those in densely populated areas; this leaves some people unvaccinated but minimizes the overall spread of disease.
Utilitarianism
This approach focuses on the consequences of actions. The morally right choice is the one that maximizes overall happiness or minimizes harm.
What ethical approach is shown below?
A nurse spends extra time comforting an anxious patient before a surgical procedure, demonstrating care and empathy.
Ethics of Care
This approach emphasizes relationships, empathy, and the context of care, focusing on meeting the needs of patients in a compassionate way.
What ethical approach is shown below?
A terminally ill patient requests increased doses of pain medication from a nurse, even if it may hasten their death. To help make a decision, the nurse examines previous cases where palliative care includes administering medication that may unintentionally hasten death, as long as the intention is to relieve suffering.
Casuistry
This is an ethical method that resolves moral dilemmas by carefully examining the specific details of a case and drawing parallels to precedents—similar past cases with known outcomes. It emphasizes the importance of context and historical examples to guide decision-making, rather than relying solely on abstract principles.
