Dorothea Orem Self Care Theory Essay Example

on clinical practice and support methods for patient care. Dorothea Orem’s theory of nursing care can be applied to the theoretical framework of inpatient nursing care. Her theory basically defines the need for nursing care in general. Orem’s theory can be pplied to describe the type of care appropriate for inpatient nursing practice provided for a post-operative female patient who suffered a femur fracture.

The theory can serve to guide the interactions of the nurse-patient relationship throughout the inpatient hospital stay. Theory provides a structure and explanation for nursing care, which is essentially proving how nursing practice is linked with nursing research, knowledge, and education. According to Orem’s theory, this surgical patient has many self-care needs they are temporarily no longer able to do for themselves.

This includes getting out of bed on their own, ambulating to the bathroom, dressing themselves, personal hygiene, maintaining control of post-operative pain, monitoring lab values and vital signs after surgery, and coordinating care with physical therapy to get the patient walking as soon as possible. In following Orem’s theory, the nurse wants to get this patient through the three different nursing systems as soon as possible. When the patient is fresh out of the OR he is in the wholly compensatory stage where the patient has no active role in care.

By the time the patient is sent to the floor he is the partial compensatory stage where both the nurse and patient take active roles in his recovery. In the educative development stage the patient is mostly self-care but just uses the nurse for minimal assistance and is mostly likey to be discharged from the hospital soon.

References

1. Saleem, T. (Ed.
   

). (2011, October 2).