Potter: Fundamentals of Nursing, 8th Edition

Chapter 04: Theoretical Foundations of Nursing Practice

Key Points - Printable

A nursing theory is a conceptualization of some aspect of nursing communicated for

the purpose of describing, explaining, predicting, and/or prescribing nursing care.
Grand theories are the complex structural framework for broad, abstract ideas.
Middle-range theories are more limited in scope and less abstract. These theories
address specific phenomena or concepts and reflect practice.
The paradigm of nursing identifies four links of interest to the profession: the person,
health, environment/situation, and nursing. Nurse theorists agree that these four
components are essential to the development of theory.
Theory is the generation of nursing knowledge used for practice. Nursing process is
the method for applying the theory or knowledge. The integration of theory and
nursing process is the basis for professional nursing.
Theories from nursing and other disciplines help explain how the roles and actions of
nurses fit together in nursing.
Theory-generating research tries to discover and describe relationships without
imposing preconceived notions (e.g., hypotheses) of what the phenomenon under
study means.
Theory-testing research determines how accurately a theory describes nursing
phenomena.

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