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.