The relationship that a patient and a nurse share is one that cannot be denied considering the position in which fate chooses to place both. The relationship between a nurse and a patient is one that has doubtless influences upon both. When the patient enters the healthcare setting, he chooses to put all his trust in the professionals around him/her and the one professional the patient comes in interaction to the most is the nurse. The patient suffers from health disorders and therefore becomes vulnerable to the world around him/her. The most vulnerable are the very young and the very old (Neal, 2009).
Even though recent observations have shown that the national trend of healthcare satisfaction has been steadily increasing in the past few years, there is still much to be done (Press Ganey, 2008). Various nursing theories have come across in the past centuries to explain the very practice of nursing and what ideology it should incorporate. Nursing knowledge is considered to be derivable from almost all subjects of the medical sciences and this knowledge can be derived from experimental teaching as well as from formal nursing teaching sources.
It has been difficult to find a unanimous agreement upon what the exact definition of nursing should be and what precise theory of nursing should be followed partially because nursing has always remained a significantly wide profession and in the modern day world, the profession means countless things to countless people. However there is always an agreement upon the fact that through the pages of time and from the day of its origin, nursing has almost always involved the people, their environment and efforts meant to bring about positive changes in the dimension of people (California State University, 2006).
Customer satisfaction surveys are generally considered to be oriented along the lines of hotel type functions. The layman is more than often found to be holding the opinion that the customer satisfaction surveys are designed and meant to only gather information regarding the experience that the patient has gone thorough during his/her stay at the healthcare facility. The reality however, is a completely different story.
In terms of nursing, these surveys are considered to be invaluable by the healthcare system in order to determine which nursing model suits the needs of the current patient. “Patient” here refers to the current segment of the society that is suffering from any form of disease or ailment that either requires or is being treated by the healthcare system. There are a number of nursing theories that have been designed and implemented in healthcare over the recent century.
These nursing theories have been designed in order to improve upon the standards of nursing so that better patient care can be made possible. The vast number of nursing theories is proof that people involved in the nursing profession is by no means an assistant to the pharmacist or the physician in any way, but is independent in its own right and plays a highly significant role in the welfare of the patient.
Famous nursing theories that have made their mark in healthcare include ones presented by Helen Erickson who presented her modeling and remodeling theory in 1983, Virginia Henderson noted for her contribution to the very definition of nursing and was awarded the first Christianne Reimann Prize in 1985, Imogene King who is considered no less than a pioneer in the development of nursing theories and is renowned for her contribution to the system of nursing, Madeleine Leininger who is more than often regarded as the founder of trans-cultural nursing, Betty Neuman for the Neuman Systems Model in 1970.
Dorothea Orem for the Orem Model of Nursing, Ida Jean which hold nurses responsible for the dispensing of care when the patient does not hold the power to ask for it, Orlando for the Nursing Process Theory, Hildegard Peplau who is known as the one of the first few who stressed upon the nurse-patient relationship, Rosemarie Rizzo-Parse for The Theory of Human Becoming, Isabel Hampton Robb who is the founder of the American Journal of Nursing and for her books, “Nursing Ethics” and “Educational Standard of Nursing”, Martha E. Rogers for her development of the Science of Unitary Human Beings and her book “An Introduction to the Theoretical Basis of Nursing” which is considered to be one of the most valued of books in the nursing profession, Professor and Nurse Theorist Callista Roy, Katherine Kolcaba for her Theory of Comfort, Nurse Theorist Katie Eriksson and the infamous Florence Nightingale who is considered to be the founder of the very field of nursing.