1.0 Person/theorist
Henderson was an influential nurse, researcher, theorist and author whose work and theories on nursing continues to influence nursing practice. Born in 1897, she became popular for offering one of the most detailed definitions of the function of a nurse. Her focus of research on nursing was to establish the best ways by which a nurse would engage the patients and bring restoration. Her research on nursing was to establish the nature of engagement that a nurse should take on to lead to the desired outcomes and help the nurse stick to professionalism (Kimuyu, 2018).
Because of her, she developed a number of thoughts and ideas on what nursing should entail including the thought that effective nursing practice should be depended on the needs of the patient. Her works on need theory continue to this day to challenge the nursing practice in the modern times as efforts are made to make nursing relevant to meeting the needs of the patients. She is considered one of the most popular theorists that brought in new concepts on the way nursing practice ought to be handled.
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2.0 Environment
Henderson’s need theory has great implications on the environment that is created by nurses to facilitate effective recovery. Henderson emphasizes the need for developing a supportive environment that responds to the need of the patients. According to Henderson, the main inspiration of a nurse should aim at assisting the client who is either sick or well to take on activities that lead to a better health or recovery and/or facilitate peaceful death. This inspiration comes through the development of the appropriate environment/surrounding for the patient to express their needs. The nurse should offer this form of help that the person would have otherwise done if he/she had the necessary will/strength and knowledge.
On this basis, she defines the nursing practice as one that is based on doing what the client/individual needing help would have done if he/she had the knowledge, strength or will. In essence, the focus of the nurse is not to do what she/he feels but to try to understand the needs of the client and aim at addressing the identified needs (Lazenby, 2017).The need theory defends that clients have needs that they would have met by themselves if they had the will, knowledge, or strength. However, the fact that they lack these means that they have to be assisted to do what they cannot do by themselves. In a practical sense, this would take the nurse to try to find out the needs of the client and assist in meeting the said needs.
3.0 Health: Contribution to Health
A healthy person is an independent person. According to Henderson, a nurse should be to help the individual being attended gain independence by regaining their health. According to the need theory, the work of a nurse should be directed towards ensuring that the unmet health needs of the client are identified and prompt action is taken towards meeting the said needs. A nurse must get deeply into the heart of the patient in order to find out what he/she needs, and ways by which the needs could be met (Kimuyu, 2018).
The primary role of a nurse goes beyond just the treatment or offering care to the situation that the nurse could see. Instead, an effective nurse should get inside the skin of each of her patients with the intention to know and understand the needs that the patient/client is going through. After understanding the needs, it becomes paramount for the nurse to find the best ways by which these needs could be met to give the client the independence that he/she needs.
4.0 Nursing: Application to Nursing Practice
Henderson’s Need Theory has great significance for the nursing practice. The theory emphasizes on the need for nurse practitioners not to interfere with the patient’s self-determination. This is said to be a critical element of nursing practice that would enable the patient to do well after being released from the hospital or care center where he/she was receiving medical help. According to this theory, the nurse's role is defined as substitutive and supplementary.
The nursing role is substitutive in the context of what the nurse offers to the patient where the patient is unable to attend independently. On the other end, the role of the nurse is seen as supplementaryin the context that the nurse acts as a helping hand by engaging with the patient to do something beyond what their knowledge or will could not help them do (Lazenby, 2017). According to Henderson, the nurse plays a major role to the patient by helping the patient receiving care to become an individual again.
5.0 Conclusion
Conclusively, Henderson did a lot of work in building her famous need theory in nursing. She explained that the work of a nurse goes beyond the care she gives while the patient is in a care setting to helping the patient when they leave the care setting. The work of a nurse is broad and involves identifying the needs that the client has at a particular time, as well as, identifying the best ways by which the identified needs could be met. The nurse has the duty of not only offering clinical care but also motivating the patient, providing the needed counsel and offering the help that is needed by the patient. The focus of the work of a nurse is to see the patient recover and get back to their independent state as they could.
References
Kimuyu, p. (2018). Challenges Faced by Nurses in Implementing Evidence Based Practice in the Clinical Setting. London: GRIN Verlag.
Lazenby, M. (2017). Caring Matters Most: The Ethical Significance of Nursing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
