Nursing Clinicals and Nursing Theories

Nursing Theories

Nursing theories are sets of interrelated concepts, models, definitions, and propositions, that are obtained through deductive reasoning and also inductive reasoning, and based on assumptions. They are used for assessing patient conditions using the specific methods contained within the nursing theory, to help identify patient needs.

These theories are selected to match with patient needs and will be applied to help solve identified problems faced by the patient. They are used to help ensure effective interaction and communication between nurse and patient. They are organized and systematic articulations of set statements that relate to questions faced within the nursing discipline.

A useful nursing theory will make assumptions concerning health problems, environment, behaviors, and target populations, that are logical, consistent, research supported, and similar to ones that have proven to be successful in previous programs.

Nursing theories are important because they are defining mechanisms that predict, describe, and explain what is the practice of nursing. They are foundational to nursing, helping to accumulate further knowledge and give indications of what direction nursing should take to develop into the future. It helps us to both decide what it is we already know, and understand what we ‘need’ to know.

In practice, nursing theories help nurses by describing, explaining, and predicting everyday experiences. This serves to guide nurses in their assessments, interventions, and evaluations of nursing care. It provides a criteria by which nursing care quality can be measured.

Nursing Theory Role in Nursing Clinicals

Theory has a role within clinical nursing practice. It is used generally to shape and undergird the way nursing is practiced irregardless of the clinical situation. It is a platform at the base level for foundation-building. It provides basic orientations, commitments, and attitudes in regard to one’s practice.

In nursing clinicals theories are used for responding to the requirements of certain clinical situations involved with nursing practice. They serve as the second level of action-formulation. They give specific ways of implementing nursing practice and fitting it into the unique requirements demanded in specific clinical situations.

Applying Nursing Theory to Practice Via Clinical Supervison

Effective mentorship is a crucial part of ensuring high quality nursing care. It helps to facilitate the positive development of health care workers, while ensuring patient safety. Professional development is the result of a partnership between mentor and support worker.

Nurses must utilize their mentorships skills in delivering one-on-one, formal and in-formal supervision, to their support workers to facilitate professional maturity. This allows support workers to actually apply their theory to practice, which also encourages them to test out new skills within a safe environment with support. Successful mentors seek to develop their staff as they work alongside team members and perform in a coaching and mentoring role.

Mentors need to strive to create an appropriate learning environment, utilize relevant resources, and deliver a desirable level of guidance and support that is structured, and that promotes professional development and growth. Individual support workers must interact with their mentors in ways that suggest their readiness to learn. They must show they are motivated and have an attitude bent toward acquiring nursing knowledge. Workplace learning, or nursing clinicals, through coaching, mentorship, and supervision that is structured, needs to be seen as a vital strategy for the future, for bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Nursing Training Model

The training model today for healthcare workers is based on the traditional teaching strategies that utilize a broad range of presentation skills. It comes with significant limitations due to its didactic and passive teaching methods. The training is facilitated within group learning environments, leaving small consideration for group dynamics, including-

  • personality Types
  • previous Experience
  • intellectual Capability Range
  • individual Learning Styles

and the training philosophy behind it is based crudely on mere supply and demand, or meeting targets, while ensuring compliance with all the legal frameworks laid down for mandatory training programs. There is a low emphasis being placed on the work-based mentorship and supervision practice, with limited follow-ups on training courses to verify that knowledge is actually being applied to practice.

Successful Application of Nursing Theory to Clinical Practice

There are a few ways for assessing the successful application of nursing theory into practice which benefit qualified nurses. They are –

  • decrease levels of sickness
  • anatomy and Phsiology – general and advanced
  • microbiology
  • psychology
  • sociology

and these things will be evidence that mentorship was successful in leading to a more highly skilled and competent workforce, that will in turn improve the clinical outcomes in ways like delivering increasing quality of care, more effective intervention, and less clinical risk to clients.

The correlation between having effective mentorship and the right motivation is clear. Those workers who experience success rather than failure will naturally have more positive self-concepts and trust for their own abilities. Therefore, they will be willing to assume more responsibility for the results they deliver, be more persistent, and put forth more effort. This breeds a more positive attitude toward acquiring knowledge and subsequently to applying theory to practice.