Imogene M. King

Nursing theories have been a fundamental tool used to explain, guide and improve the practice of nursing. Theorists have contributed enormously to the growth of nursing as a profession. The four grand theorists I chose are Virginia Henderson, Peplau, Myra Levine and Jean Watson. These theorists have contributed tremendously in the field of nursing through their theories, and research. One thing the theorists have in common is that they are patient centered. They are all concerned on ways we can improve our responsibility to the patients, their families and the environment. They have different ideas but they are all aiming towards achieving the same goal, which is patient satisfaction and safety. Their differences are in their areas of

Alice Magaw was born November 9, 1860, in Cashocton, Ohio. Besides her contribution to nursing, little is known about Alice’s personal life and what inspired her to enter the field on nursing. However, one can guess that she saw a demand for nurses and had a passion for caring for others. During this time period, nursing schools were incorporated into hospitals. Alice Magaw attended the Women’s Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago from 1887 to1889, around the time that nursing began to transform from a lower class occupation to a respectable profession. After graduation Alice worked as a private duty nurse in Chicago. In 1893, Alice began her work under Dr. William J. and Charles H.

Nursing was, for my sixteen year old self, taking care of the sick. Little did I know the complexities of that definition. Still, taking care of the sick was interesting enough to make nursing my major. I started practicing nursing years ago. However, I still struggle defining and explaining my profession to others. I usually start by differentiating nursing from medicine. Nurses see patients as humans rather than a disease that needs treatment (Zaccagnini & White, 2014, p. 15). However, as I advance my career, I must actively incorporate nursing theory into my practice. Nursing theory gives a foundation to understand patients and their health problems better. The use of nursing theory provides a framework to evaluate nurses’ interventions on a higher standard (Zaccagnini & White, 2014). Kenney described five steps to follow once the decision to include nursing theory has being made. This paper will explore the process of applying the Kenney’s five steps into my practice.

Imogene King was born in 1921in Iowa. Growing up, she dreamed of being a teacher but began nursing school to escape her small town life. She graduated with a diploma in nursing in 1945, then three years later earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Education and worked as medical-surgical instructor and an assistant director at St. John’s School of Nursing until 1958, fulfilling her lifelong dream of being a teacher wither nursing career. She went on to earn a Master of Science in Nursing in 1957 and a doctorate in education in 1961 (Imogene King, 2011). King then became an associate professor at Loyola University in Chicago and formed a master’s degree program that was based on her nursing concepts, which later became the framework for her theory.

I define my philosophy of nursing within the three nursing domains of person, health, and environment. My goal is to communicate the importance of nursing as a knowledge-based career, depending not only on the nurse fulfilling her role but also on the patient’s compliance. A patient must learn to provide self-care at home in the same capacity as the nurse would provide care in the clinical setting. I discuss various subjects within nursing. I explain why I want to be a nurse, what I believe a nurse’s role is, the different domains of nursing, and where I believe nursing will be in the future. My philosophy demonstrates the interdependence of the nursing domains. You cannot fully evaluate a person without evaluating their health,

Imogene King was the Midwestern, twentieth century nursing theorist that developed the conceptual system and theory of goal attainment and transactional process. Although not without controversy, her theory has been the spring board for some middle range nursing theories and nursing education programs. This theory is particularly intriguing to individuals who are goal driven and will be explored in detail in the following paragraphs.

For centuries the development of nursing knowledge has been influenced by numerous theorists and their respective theories. These theories have influenced, and continue to influence, nursing education, practice and research. (Johnson & Webber, 2005)

Mary Adelaide Nutting is known for being a professional nurse and nursing professor. First and foremost her responsibilities were to her duties of being a nurse. Since she was a professional nurse she would take care of her patients and help them in every way she could. Her next responsibility was training others who wanted to become nurses. In this she “helped establish new standards of conduct for training nurses and for hospital treatment of nurses” (). Together with her background in nursing and experience in the field she made for an outstanding professor. As exemplified by the “Mary Adelaide Nutting Medal of the National League of Nursing Education”, which was made in her honor in 1944 ().

Everyone’s values and beliefs about the profession of nursing are all different. The four concepts of nursing are interrelated and all mean something different to every person, too. Throughout this paper, I will be reflecting on my values and beliefs about nursing through the four concepts while comparing them to a nursing theorist with views that are most similar to my own.

I am a recent baccalaureate graduate of Charleston Southern University. I received my Bachelor of Science in Nursing in May of 2015. On June 20, 2015, I received my NCLEX-RN results and became a registered nurse in the state of South Carolina. After considering my options for a graduate program, I happily accepted my offer from Case Western Reserve University and moved to Cleveland to pursue my graduate studies. Over the course of my undergraduate career, theories were included in the curriculum but not in depth. It is for this reason that I am excited to partake in this course – to learn the foundational and applicable theories of the nursing profession.

Background and History July 1925, in the small town of Sutton, Nebraska, Madeleine Leininger began her story. A woman with many talents, a vision, and heart created a pathway for a more involved and caring profession in Nursing. Leininger believed that basing your care on the patient’s culture was vital to curing and that curing was not possible without caring (Leininger, 2002,). At the age of 17, she began her career as an elementary school teacher. From there she started her nursing education at the St. Anthony Hospital School in Denver, Colorado while serving in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.

Imogene King developed her theory in 1960 while working as a professor at Loyola University. It describes a dynamic, interpersonal relationship in which a patient grows and develops to attain certain life goals (Petiprin 2016). She was challenged by one of her fellow associates to look at nursing on a theory level, rather than nursing as a system. Imogene gladly accepted the challenge and started doing research. She found that patients responded better health wise with stronger nurse-patient relationships and with obtainable goals set by both parties. King even went as far as going to Japan to put her theory into practice. She received good feedback from the patients and fellow nurses on her goal attainment theory. From then on out, she went

Virginia Henderson was born November 30, 1897, in Kansas City, Missouri and was a descendant of a long line of scholars and educators (Nursing theory, n.d.). She graduated in 1921 from the Army School of Nursing at Walter Reed Hospital and started teaching nursing at Norfolk Protestant hospital in Virginia in 1923. She received her Bachelor’s degree in 1932 and her master’s degree in nursing education in 1934 from Teachers College at Columbia University. After earning her master’s degree, she stayed at Teachers College as a faculty member until 1948. After 1953 she was a research associate at the Yale University School of Nursing. She was awarded twelve honorary doctoral degrees from various institutions during her career (Nursing theory, n.d.). She has many published works on nursing with the most notable being the 5th edition of Textbook of Principles and Practice of Nursing that she co-authored with the original author, Bertha Harmer (Current Nursing, n.d.).

Imogene King was not only involved in nursing for 60 years, but she was a leader in nursing right from her start in the diploma program at St. John’s Hospital School of Nursing, St. Louis, Missouri. King saw nursing as a challenge. She credits her Jesuit education, her perception of personal

Secondly, through all of the other nursing theorists that we learnt about in this course including Patricia Benner, Josephine Patterson, Loretta Zderad, Jean Watson, and