Self Care Deficit Theory
INTRODUCTION
Theorist : Dorothea Elizabeth Orem (1914-2007)
Born: 1914 in Baltimore, US, Maryland.
Education: Earned her diploma at Providence Hospital – Washington, DC
1939 – BSN Ed., Catholic University of America
1945 – MSN Ed., Catholic University of America
She worked as a staff nurse, private duty nurse, nurse educator and administrator and nurse consultant.
Received honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1976.
Theory was first published in Nursing: Concepts of Practice in 1971, second in 1980, in 1995, and 2001.
The Self-Care Deficit Theory developed as a result of Dorethea Orem working toward her goal of
improving the quality of nursing in general hospitals in her state.
The model interrelates
concepts in such a way as to create a different way of looking at a particular phenomenon.
The theory is relatively simple, but generalizable to apply to a wide variety of patients.
It can be used by nurses to guide and improve practice, but it must be consistent with
other validated theories, laws and principles.
The major assumptions of Orem's Self-Care Deficit Theory are:
> People should be self-reliant, and responsible for their care, as well as others in their family who need care.
>People are distinct individuals.
>Nursing is a form of action. It is an interaction between two or more people.
>Successfully meeting universal and development self-care
requisites is an important component of primary care prevention and ill
health.
>A person's knowledge of potential health problems is needed for promoting self-care behaviors.
>Self-care and dependent care are behaviors learned within a socio-cultural context.
DEFINITIONS OF DOMAIN CONCEPTS
Nursing- is art a helping service and a technology
Goal of nursing- to render the patient or members of his family capable of meeting the patients self care needs.
> To maintain a state of health
> To regain normal or near normal state of health in the event of disease or injury.
> To Stabilize control or minimize the effects of chronic poor health or disability.
THEORY OF SELF CARE
- Self-care: which is the practice of activities that an individual initiates and performs on his or her own behalf to maintain life, health, and well-being.
- Self-care agency: which is a human ability that is "the ability for engaging in self-care," conditioned by age, developmental state, life experience, socio-cultural orientation, health, and available resources.
- Therapeutic self-care demand: which is the total self-care actions to be performed over a specific duration to meet self-care requisites by using valid methods and related sets of operations and actions.
- Self-care requisites: which include the categories of universal, developmental, and health deviation self-care requisites.
3 CATEGORIES
1. Universal self-care requisite: are associated with life processes, as well as the maintenance of the integrity of human structure and functioning. Orem identifies these requisites, also called activities of daily living, or ADLs, as:
1. the maintenance of sufficient intake of air, food, and water
2.provision of care associated with the elimination process
3.a balance between activities and rest, as well as between solitude and social interaction
4.the prevention of hazards to human life and well-being
5.the promotion of human functioning
2. Developmental self-care requisites: are associated with developmental processes.
They are generally derived from a condition or associated with an event.
3. Health deviation self-care: is required in conditions of illness, injury, or
disease. These include:
- Seeking and securing appropriate medical assistance
- Being aware of and attending to the effects and results of pathologic conditions
- Effectively carrying out medically prescribed measures
- Modifying self-concepts to accept one self as being in a particular state of health and in specific forms of health care
- Learning to live with the effects of pathologic conditions.
The theory identifies five methods of
helping:
1. acting for and doing for others.
2. guiding others.
3 .supporting another.
4.providing an environment promoting personal development in relation to meet future
demands.
5.teaching another.
The theory of nursing systems describes how the patient's self-care needs will be
met by the nurse, the patient, or by both. Orem identifies three classifications
of nursing system to meet the self-care requisites of the patient: wholly compensatory
system, partly compensatory system, and supportive-educative system.
Orem recognized that specialized technologies are usually developed by members of
the health care industry.
The theory identifies two categories of technologies.
The first is social or interpersonal:
In this category, communication is adjusted
to age and health status.
The nurse helps maintain interpersonal, intra-group, or
inter-group relations for the coordination of efforts.
The nurse should also
maintain a therapeutic relationship in light of psychosocial modes of functioning
in health and disease. In this category, human assistance adapted to human needs,
actions, abilities, and limitations is given by the nurse.
The second is regulatory technologies: which maintain and promote life processes.
This category regulates psycho- and physiological modes of functioning in health
and disease. Nurses should promote human growth and development, as well as regulating
position and movement in space.
Orem's approach to the nursing process provides a method to determine the self-care
deficits and then to define the roles of patient or nurse to meet the self-care demands.
The steps in the approach are thought of us the technical component of the nursing
process. Orem emphasizes that the technological component "must be coordinated with
interpersonal and social pressures within nursing situations.
The nursing process in this model has three parts. First is the assessment:
which collects data to determine the problem or concern that needs to be addressed.
The Second is the diagnosis and creation of a Nursing care plan
.
The Third and final step of
the nursing process: is implementation and evaluation. The nurse sets the health
care plan into motion to meet the goals set by the patient and his or her health
care team, and, when finished, evaluate the nursing care by interpreting the
results of the implementation of the plan.
