Nursing is often voted the most trusting profession, is this due to the humanistic approach of traditional nursing or looking further back into the history of nursing and the vocational ‘Florence’ holistic caring approach? As nurses engage in technology to deliver care and encroach into areas of medicine to increase the nursing scope of practice, are we at risk of losing the therapeutic nurse-client relationship?  If we reflect on the fundamentals of nurse training, it was likely based around nurse theory and systems of care, and surprisingly not the core standards that hospitals use as measurements of quality that nurses are faced with on a day to day basis no matter what the level of acuity or staffing. Theorists and models of care such as Benner, Henderson,  Orem, Rogers, Roy and Roper, Logan & Tierney – and each country will likely have certain theories that form the backbone of its nurse training curriculum. Look at the concepts, and see we are still trying to encourage independence, return power to the patient, end pyjama paralysis, provide effective rehabilitation and ensure healthcare is evidence based and ideally available for all.

Keywords: Care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment (The 6 C’s).

Below are some great online resources, don’t forget to revisit those text books gathering dust on your healthcare book shelf.

Books

• Kim, H., & Kollak, I. (2006). Nursing theories: Conceptual and philosophical foundations. Springer Publishing Company.
• Parker, M. E. (2001). Nursing theories and nursing practice.
• McEwen, M., & Wills, E. M. (2014). Theoretical basis for nursing. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Online Resources

• Nursing Theory.org (2016). Nursing Theorists.
• Nursing Times (2018). Nursing theories 3: nursing models.
• Norwich University (2017). 5 Nursing Theories for Nurse Educators.
• Nursing Theories (2012). Nursing Theories.