Comfort Theory and Its Application to Oncology Nursing
Components of the Theory
Major Concepts
Developed by Katherine Kolcaba, The Comfort Theory uses a holistic approach to patient care. Kolcaba ‘s theory of comfort (2003) is described as the immediate experience of being strengthened as a result of having needs of relief, ease, and transcendence met in the context of physical, pyschospiritual, social, and environmental experiences. The Comfort Theory is a middle range nursing theory developed from the work of earlier nursing theorist including Orlando (1961), Henderson (1966), Paterson & Zderad (1988). The major concepts of Kolcaba’s theory of comfort are as follows: (1) Health Care Needs: health care needs are needs for comfort arising from stressful health care situations that cannot be met by recipients’ traditional support systems. (2) Comfort Interventions: comfort interventions are nursing actions designed to address specific comfort needs of recipient, including physiological, social, cultural, financial, psychological, spiritual, environmental, and physical interventions. (3) Intervening Variables: Intervening variables are interacting forces that influence recipients’ perceptions of total comfort. (4) Comfort: comfort is the state experienced by recipients of comfort interventions. (5) Health-Seeking Behaviors: A broad category of outcomes related to the pursuit of health as defined by recipient (s) in consultation with the nurse Health Seeking Behaviors (HSBs) was synthesized by Schlotfeldt (1975) and proposed to be internal, external, or a peaceful death. (Alligood & Tomey, 2010, p. 709).
Assumptions
It seems that theories make assumptions that seem to be based on philosophical beliefs about environment, heal...
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...er undergoing radiation therapy. Oncology Nursing Forum, 26(1), 67-72.
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The development of nursing theories has provided a perspective in which one can define the purpose of nursing, when nursing is required, and establish the parameters and goals of therapeutic nursing activities (Ahmed,2001). A nursing theory is defined "as concepts, definitions, relationships, and assumptions derived from nursing models or from other disciplines and project a purposive, systematic view of phenomena by designing specific inter-relationships among concepts for the purposes of describing, explaining and predicting the phenomena of nursing” (Boxer & Jones, 2010). In addition, nursing theories provide frameworks through which nurses can examine various situations. As nurses encounter new situations, these frameworks provide a structure for organization, analysis, decision making and communication (Ahmed, 2001). The following paper will discuss the middle range nursing theory of Family Stress and Adaptation by Geri LoBiondo-Wood, and how it relates to patient care and guides nursing practice.
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Comfort is important to caring in nursing because it is the nurse 's job to try and help the patient feel at ease and be pain free.
This interactive grand theory is grounded in humanist philosophy, which expresses the belief that humans are unitary beings and energy fields in constant interaction with the universal energy field. This model guides the nurse who is interested in “physiologic” and “psychological” adoptions (McEwen & Wills, 2014, p. 177). This model views the nurse as holistic adaptive system constantly interacting with different stimuli. And also explains how different sets of interrelated systems maintain a balance between various stimuli to promote individual and environmental transformation (Alkrisat & Dee, 2014). This model creates a framework to provide care for individuals in health and “in acute, chronic, or terminal illness” (Shah, Abdullah, & Khan, 2015, p. 1834). It focuses on improving basic life processes of individuals, families, groups of people; nurses see communities as holistic adaptive systems. It consists of three basic assumptions: philosophical, scientific, and cultural. And it also contains many defined concepts about the environment, health, person, goal of nursing, adaptation, focal, contextual, and residual stimuli, cognator and regulator subsystem, and stabilizer and innovator control processes (McEwen & Wills, 2014, p.
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