JOYCE TRAVELBEE (Human-to-Human Relationship

Model )

JOYCE TRAVELBEE
(19261973)
Human-to-Human Relationship Model
A nurse does not only seek to alleviate physical pain or
render physical care she ministers to the whole
person. The existence of the suffering whether physical,
mental or spiritual is the proper concern of the nurse.
- Joyce Travelbee

Life Story
A psychiatric nurse, educator and writer born in 1926.
1956, she completed her BSN degree at
Louisiana State University
1959, she completed her Master of Science
Degree in Nursing at Yale University
Working Experiences:
1952, Psychiatric Nursing Instructor at Depaul
Hospital Affilliate School, New Orleans.
Also she taught at Charity Hospital School of
Nursing in Louisiana State University, New York
University and University of Mississippi.
1970, the Project Director of Graduate
Education at Louisiana State University School of
Nursing until her death.
Publications:

1963, started to publish articles and journals in
nursing.
1966 and 1971, publication of her first book
entitled Interpersonal Aspects of Nursing.
1969, when she published her second book
Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing: Process in the One-
to-One Relationship.

She started Doctoral program in Florida in 1973.
Unfortunately, she was not able to finish it because she
died later that year. She passed away at the prime age
of 47 after a brief sickness.

Theoretical Sources
Catholic charity institutions
Ida Jean Orlando, her instructorThe nurse is
responsible for helping the patient avoid and alleviate
the distress of unmet needs. The nurse and patient
interrelate with each other.
Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz and other
Nazi concentration campsproposed the theory of
logotherapy in which a patient is actually confronted
with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life.

Nursing Metaparadigm
Person
- Person is defined as a human being.
- Both the nurse and the patient are human beings.
- A human being is a unique, irreplaceable individual
who is in continuous process of becoming, evolving and
changing.

Health
- Health is subjective and objective.
- Subjective healthis an individually defined state of
well being in accord with self-appraisal of physical-
emotional-spiritual status.
- Objective healthis an absence of discernible disease,
disability of defect as measured by physical
examination, laboratory tests and assessment by
spiritual director or psychological counselor.

Environment
- Environment is not clearly defined.
- She defined human conditions and life experiences
encountered by all men as sufferings, hope, pain and
illness.
Illness being unhealthy, but rather explored the
human experience of illness

Suffering is a feeling of displeasure which ranges from
simple transitory mental, physical or spiritual
discomfort to extreme anguish and to those phases
beyond anguishthe malignant phase of dispairful not
caring and apathetic indifference

Pain is not observable. A unique experience. Pain is a
lonely experience that is difficult to communicate fully
to another individual.

Hope the desire to gain an end or accomplish a goal
combined with some degree of expectation that what is
desired or sought is attainable

Hopelessness being devoid of hope


Nursing
- Nursing is an interpersonal process whereby the
professional nurse practitioner assists an individual,
family or community to prevent or cope with
experience or illness and suffering, and if necessary to
find meaning in these experiences.

Human-to-Human Relationship Model
- humanistic revolution

Interactional Phases of Human-to-Human Relationship
Model:
1. Original Encounter
- First impression by the nurse of the sick person and
vice-versa.
- Stereotyped or traditional roles
2. Emerging Identities
- the time when relationship begins
- the nurse and patient perceives each others
uniqueness
3. Empathy
- the ability to share in the persons experience
4. Sympathy
- when the nurse wants to lessen the cause of patients
suffering.
- it goes beyond empathyWhen one sympathizes,
one is involved but not incapacitated by the
involvement.
- therapeutic use of self
5. Rapport
- Rapport is described as nursing interventions that
lessens the patients suffering.
- Relation as human being to human being
- A nurse is able to establish rapport because she
possesses the necessary knowledge and skills required
to assist ill persons and because she is able to perceive,
respond to and appreciate the uniqueness of the ill
human being.

*phases are in consecutive and developmental process.

Logical Form
- An inductive theory that uses specific nursing
situations to create general ideas.

Application
Practice:
Hospice self-actualizing life experience. Assumption of
the sick role. Meaning of life and sickness and death.

Education:
Teaches nurses to understand the meaning of illness
and suffering.

Research:
Applied in the theory of caring cancer patients.

Analysis
Clarity is not consistent in clarity and origin.
1. Definition of terms came from dictionaries and books
etc.
2. Used different terms for the same definition.
3. Focus more on adult individuals who are sick and the
nurses role in helping them to find meaning in their
sickness and suffering.
4. Deals in families and their needs but not in the
community

Simplicity not simple.
1. Contains different variables.

Generality has wide scope of application but
applicable only to those patients in distress and life
changing events.

Empirical Precision low measures of empirical
soundness.
1. Result of lack of simplicity.
2. Defines concepts theoretically but does not define
them operationally.
3. The model has not been tested.

Derivable Consequences development of quality of
caring.
1. It is useful because of its ability to describe, explain,
predict and control a phenomena.
2. Explains the variables that affect the establishment of
a therapeutic relationship between nurses and patients.
3. Lack of empirical precision also creates lack of
usefulness.