Essay On Dorothy Orem's Self Care Theory

Orem’s general theory of nursing consisted of three related parts of self-care, self-care deficit, and nursing systems. The first was the concept of self-care which is the practice of activities that persons perform independently to promote and maintain personal well-being, healthful functioning, and continuing development throughout life (Masters, 2011). Self-care agency is the ability to engage in self-care. This is conditioned by age, life experience, health, developmental state, and available resources. Orem describes self-care requisites as activities of daily living that are common to all individuals. The universal requisites include air, water, food, elimination, activity, rest, social interaction/solitude, prevention of hazards to

This concept is the central focus of her Grand theory. She describes self-care deficit as the relationship between the person’s ability to perform self-care and the demand in which self-care agency is not sufficient to meet one’s self-care demands (Nursing Theories. Dorothy Orem 's Self-Care Theory, 2012). The concept of self-care deficit is expressed when nursing is needed and how people can be helped by nursing. Through the various methods of nursing, nurses are able to meet the person’s self-care needs. Orem’s last major concept relates to nursing systems. This describes the nursing responsibilities, role of nurse and patient, and types of actions needed to meet the patient’s demands. The actions performed by the nurse are determined by the patient’s specific self-care needs. This is composed of three systems including wholly compensatory, partially compensatory, and supportive-educative. Wholly compensatory is when the patient is so limited that the patient depends on the nurse to meet all of their self-care needs for well-being such as a bedridden patient or a patient recovering from surgery in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU). Partially compensatory demonstrates the patient is able to meet some of their needs but still needs the nurses help for others such as ambulation and bathing. Supportive-educative is when a patient can meet self-care requisites but needs assistance in decision-making or

The hospital will provide nursing care and teaching based off of Dorothea Orem’s theory. Nurses will be taught to assess patients based off of this theory, and to help with the deficits they face. Nurses will assess the needs of their patients. They will look at the three different types of needs, universal, developmental, and health deviation self-care requisites. Nurses then will be able to identify which areas the patient is in most need. It will be the end goal for the nurses to restore patients to the best they can, and to make them as self-sufficient as