Middle Range Nursing Theory. Theories of nursing that are Middle-Range tend to be more specific in focus and offer more concrete connections between Grand Nursing Theories and Nursing Practice. The concepts of Middle-Range theories tend to be less abstract and tend to me more verifiable through testing. These theories can often attempt to describe, explain, or predict certain phenomenon in clinical practice.
What are mid range nursing theories?
Mid-Range Nursing Theories These are theories that drill down into specific areas of nursing rather than deal with sweeping concepts. They can emerge from nursing practice, research, or from the theories of similar disciplines.
Why middle range theory is useful in nursing?
The middle range theory for nursing is very important for the nurses and therefore, the nursing practice can be improved with this theory. The focuses that are laid by this theory, develops the concrete and conceptual framework of ideas in the nurses with which they can practice their profession efficiently.
What is an example of middle range theory?
Examples of middle-range theories are theories of reference groups, social mobility, normalization processes, role conflict and the formation of social norms. What is an example of a middle range nursing theory? Watson’s theory of human caring is an example of a middle-range explanatory theory.
What are the benefits of Nursing theories?
Nursing theories also allow nurses to positively influence the health and well being of their patients beyond taking care of them at the bedside. Nursing theory-guided practice helps improve the quality of care delivered and helps continue to move the nursing profession forward into the 21st century.
What is the purpose of a middle range nursing theory?
Defined as a “set of related ideas that are focused on a limited dimension of the reality of nursing” (p xi), middle range theory can be used to guide everyday practice, providing the frame of reference the CNS needs to guide selection of interventions in various patient care situations.
What makes a middle-range theory?
Middle-range theories are more concrete and narrower than grand theories; they are made up of a limited number of concepts and propositions that are written at a relatively concrete and specific level.
What are middle-range theories and grand theories?
Two types of nursing theories are grand nursing theories and middle range nursing theories. Grand nursing theories encompass all aspects of the human experience and allow for general application whereas middle range theories are less abstract and are more specific (McKenna & Slevin, 2008).
What is middle-range theory and example?
Examples of middle-range theories are theories of reference groups, social mobility, normalization processes, role conflict and the formation of social norms. The middle-range approach has played a role in turning sociology into an increasingly empirically oriented discipline.
What is the key and essential characteristic of middle-range theory?
The distinguishing feature of middle-range theory, then, is not its level of abstraction, but the way in which it is empirically grounded.
What is an example of grand theory in nursing?
Examples of grand theories of nursing include the theory of health as expanding consciousness and the self-care deficit theory. Qualitative researchers use an array of grand theories from symbolic interactionism to general systems theory.
What is the importance of middle-range theory and grand theory in nursing profession?
While grand theories can help establish a larger framework, middle-range and practice-level theories allow for the governance of specific types of nurses or certain health care scenarios. An example in action is the Neuman Systems model, named after famous nursing theorist Betty Neuman.
Is comfort theory a middle-range theory?
Kolcaba's Theory of Comfort was first developed in the 1990s. It is a middle-range theory for health practice, education, and research. This theory has the potential to place comfort in the forefront of healthcare. According to the model, comfort is an immediate desirable outcome of nursing care.
What is the middle range theory of nursing?
They borrowed the phrase from Merton's Social Theory and Structure [1957], where it had clear positivistic implications. For Merton, middle-range theory is the set of laws that are derived from grand theory and linked to observation by bridge laws. Middle-range theories are simply less abstract, and hence more directly testable, consequences of grand theories. Even though Suppe et al. explicitly rejected the idea that “middle-range” denotes a location in the hierarchy of theory [ Lenz, et al., 1995, p. 6], many nurse scholars continued to understand it this way [ Fawcett, 1999/1985; Liehr and Smith, 1999; Higgins and Moore, 2000 ]. As a result, the main philosophical dispute about middle-range theory has been whether middle-range theories can be developed independently of grand theories.
What is the Parsons program?
Other than Merton's deliberate plea for empirical middle range theories, Parsons' program was analytical grand theory. Merton stood for empirical functionalism, Parsons for analytical functionalism (Parsons 1951 ). He introduced his four-function paradigm as an analytical instrument of analyzing structures as well as dynamic processes with regard to abstract functions (Parsons 1966, 1967, 1978, Parsons and Smelser 1956 ). By cross-tabulating the instrumental/consummatory and the internal/external orientation of action, he defined four abstract functions: instrumental/external: adaptation (A); consummatory/external: goal attainment (G); consummatory/internal: integration (I); instrumental/internal: latent pattern maintenance (L). For further differentiation, Parsons distinguishes three levels of applying the four-function scheme: social system: economic (A), political (G), community (I), fiduciary (L) system; general action system: behavioral (A), personality (G), social (I), and cultural (L) system; human condition: physico-chemical (A), organic (G), action (I), and telic (L) system. Further differentiation results from the application of the scheme to one of the subsystems. After having developed an analytical action theory in his first work of 1937, The Structure of Social Action (Parsons 1937/1968 ), Parsons established structural functionalism as a link between analytical functionalism and systems theory in The Social System in the early 1950s, and extended that link with the introduction of his theory of generalized media of interchange (money (A), political power (G), influence (I) and value-commitments (L) for the social system) and his theory of evolution as instruments for the analysis of dynamic processes of inflation and deflation and social change in the 1960s. With his turn to functionalism, systems, media, and evolutionary theory he did, however, not give up the core position of his early action theory: the idea that social order emerges from the interaction between controlling and dynamizing forces. In his systems theory, he couched this idea in the double cybernetic hierarchy of conditions and controls. From L to A energy and dynamics in the system increase, while information and control decrease, and vice versa.
What is policy making?
Policy-making is replete with informal relationships and the operation of subtle, somewhat opaque norms that empower certain actors in unexpected ways. Accordingly, the methodologies developed for delimiting a policy network have a broader use in policy analysis.
What is the importance of understanding sociology?
So the sociologist has to make these individuals actions, beliefs, or attitudes ‘understandable.’ But understanding an individual action means finding out the meaning of the action for the actor, in other words the motivations and reasons that have inspired it. For Weber this operation amounts to building a theory of the motivations of social actors subject to the ordinary criteria any scientific theory should meet. Thus, when I see somebody cutting wood in his yard, I would reject the theory according to which he would cut wood because he is cold, if this action takes place on a hot summer day. On the whole, to Weber, ‘understanding’ is a crucial moment in the ‘explanation’ of any social phenomenon.
What are some alternatives to the H-D model?
At a broader level of analysis, a number of alternatives to the H-D model confirmation have been proposed. Salmon advocates a modified Bayesianism model which captures the complex reasoning by which archaeologists weigh the significance of evidence for a particular hypothesis against its prior probability of being true ( 1982, Chap. 3, pp. 31–57). Many of these considerations figure in Kelley and Hanen's account of archaeological practice as a comparative process of inference to the best explanation, but they also emphasize several other epistemic virtues such as explanatory power and consistency with established ‘core beliefs.’ Popper's falsificationist account of theory testing has been advocated by Bell ( 1994) who argues that archaeologists should proceed, not by building support for bold conjectures confirmationally, but by searching for the evidence that is most likely to refute them.
What was Merton's middle range theory?
Merton's ‘middle range theory,’ that aimed at explaining specific social phenomena, was seen as the proper alternative to the type of general theory illustrated by Parsons, which C. Wright Mills had polemically called ‘Grand Theory,’ the object of which was ‘society’ as a whole.
What is value commitment in sociology?
A value-commitment to the construction of limited scope but abstract theories coupled with a value commitment to a recursive process of unification of such theories may well be a plausible path for the advance of sociological theory. At present, this approach is most strongly institutionalized in the field of research known as group processes, in which theorists elaborate and integrate their theories over time in connection with the construction of experimental situations that provide opportunities for testing the implications of theories. (For examples of group process research programs in relation to theory growth, see Berger and Zelditch 1993 .)
What is health teaching in nursing?
The importance of health teaching as a part of nursing has been recognised for a long time. A professional model for teaching in nursing practice consists of four components: social service ideal (characteristics of the profession), practice environment (environment that influences the practice), client state (nurse's view of the client), and nursing practice strategies (unique nursing interventions) [57]. This model is applicable in nursing in hypertension care as it encompasses a professional autonomy and spirit which the nurse must master as she is often managing the clinic on her own. She must also have understanding of man's physiological and psychosocial state to make an assessment of the patient to determine the nature of teaching needed. This encompasses a holistic view. The teaching can be performed individually or in group. Hypertensive patients were interviewed about their views on a working booklet used in consultations at nurse-led clinics where the nurses had received counselling training [58]. The booklet was reported to have been read several times by some patients, but a few patients did not remember receiving it. Individual health education in primary care is reported to give lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure and body mass index and improve self-efficacy regarding medication adherence [59].
What are the concepts of importance for the nurse when nursing patients in hypertension care?
They involve applying theories and models for behavioural change in the consultation and using counselling skills, patient advocacy, empowerment, professional knowledge and health education, and supporting the patient.
What is primary care for hypertension?
Patients with hypertension during pregnancy or other severe diseases are usually taken care of within specialised care, but adult patients with hypertension are mostly managed in primary care. Preferably the care is team-based so that the patients are met in a congruent way. The team can include, besides the nurse and physician, a physiotherapist or other professionals. The members of the team have to be aware that not many patients can identify any specific symptoms that are obviously connected with hypertension [3]; elevated blood pressure is most often detected when a patient is treated for some other ailment. The finding might surprise the patients, and then being faced with demands to perform self-care to adjust some figures on paper might be perceived as a real challenge. The nurse who sees the patient at visits to the clinic in primary care is presumed to have a health-promotional, holistic, and psychosocial approach in helping the patients to achieve blood pressure control.
What is middle range theory of nursing?
As not much in the form of research and guidelines for nurses is available, a middle-range theory of nursing in hypertension care was developed to guide nurses in their practice, in order to improve the nursing of patients and design studies for investigating nursing in hypertension care.
When are research results presented in a hypertensive patient?
In the paper research results from each concept are presented whenever any study with hypertensive patients involved has been found regardless of the study's age. First, concepts related to the patient are presented followed by the concepts related to nursing in hypertension care, concepts related to the consultation where the patient and nurse meet, the integration with Orem's self-care deficit theory, and finally the expected outcome (Figure 1).
What are the concepts related to nursing?
The concepts related to nursing (theories and models for behavioural change, counselling skills, patient advocacy, empowerment, professional knowledge, health education and support) form the nursing system in hypertension care which the nurse brings into the encounter with the patient.
What is social support?
There is no universally accepted definition or conceptualisation of social support, but Lindsey [35] defines social support as provision of information that leads people to believe they are cared for, loved, esteemed, valued, and a member of a network of communication and mutual obligation. There are four types of social support: informational (provision of information that the person can use in coping with personal and environmental problems), appraisal (transmission of information relevant to self-evaluation), instrumental (access of the individual to behaviours that directly help in time of need), and emotional (provision of empathy and demonstration of love, trust, and caring). Social network that provides social support is defined as a group of people with whom the person has social connections, which may be formal or informal and can be described by size, density, and complexity. In studies high social network score is associated with lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure for both sexes [36]. In China it was found that social support, education, and duration of diagnosis of hypertension were significant predictors of treatment adherence [37].
