Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Sep;33(3):540-555.
doi: 10.1111/scs.12670. Epub 2019 Mar 13.

Usefulness of nursing theory-guided practice: an integrative review

Ahtisham Younas  1   2 , Shannon Quennell  3
Affiliations

Usefulness of nursing theory-guided practice: an integrative review

Ahtisham Younas et al. Scand J Caring Sci. 2019 Sep.

Abstract

Background: Nursing theory-guided practice helps improve the quality of nursing care because it allows nurses to articulate what they do for patients and why they do it. However, the usefulness of nursing theory-guided practice has been questioned and more emphasis has been placed on evidence-based nursing and traditional practice. Therefore, an examination of experimental studies was undertaken to analyse the extent of use and usefulness of nursing theories in guiding practice. We reviewed experimental studies because in this era of evidence-based practice, these designs are given more weightage over other research designs. This examination would corroborate the usefulness of nursing theory-guided practice compared to traditional practice.

Methods: An integrative review was conducted. Literature search was performed within multiple databases, and 35 studies were reviewed and appraised.

Results: Majority of the studies were from Iran, the United States and Turkey and used Orem's self-care model, Roy's adaptation model and Peplau's theory of interpersonal relations. The effect of theory-guided interventions was evaluated in improving quality of life, self-efficacy, self-care and stress of patients with chronic, acute, cardiac and psychological illnesses. The quality rating was judged to be strong for three studies, moderate for 25 studies and weak for seven studies. All of the strongly rated studies found nursing theory-guided interventions useful. Overall, nursing theory-guided interventions improved all of studied outcomes in 26 studies and at least one outcome in nine studies. None of the studies reported that nursing theory-guided interventions as not useful.

Conclusion: Nursing theories have guided practice in both eastern and Western countries, and theory-guided practice has been found useful compared to traditional nursing practice. Therefore, nurses should continue to guide their nursing practice through the lens of nursing theories and should continue to evaluate the effectiveness of nursing theory-guided practice.

Keywords: experimental studies; nursing theories; nursing theory-guided practice.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. McCarthy CT, Aquino-Russell C. A comparison of two nursing theories in practice: Peplau and Parse. Nurs Sci Q 2009; 22: 34-40.
    1. Gournay K. Mental health nursing in 2001 - what happens next? J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs 2001; 8: 1-3.
    1. McKenna HP, Slevin OD. Nursing Models, Theories and Practice. 2008, Blackwell, Oxford.
    1. McCrae N. Whither nursing models? The value of nursing theory in the context of evidence-based practice and multidisciplinary health care. J Adv Nurs 2012; 68: 222-9.
    1. Bond AE, Eshah NF, Bani-Khaled M, Hamad AO, Habashneh S, Kataua H, Al-Jarrah I, Abu Kamal A, Hamdan FR, Maabreh R. Who uses nursing theory? A univariate descriptive analysis of five years’ research articles. Scand J Caring Sci 2011; 25: 404-9.

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources