Imogene Martina King created the Theory of Goal Attainment in the early 1960s and was one of the foremost and most sought-after nursing theorists. Her work is used in several service contexts and taught to thousands of nursing students worldwide. King, a respected worldwide leader, had a substantial influence on the scientific foundation of nursing, which had a good impact on the nursing profession. She was a model professional nurse leader who had a lasting influence on nursing education, practice, and research.
According to the Theory of Goal Attainment, nursing entails a sequence of action, reaction, and interaction in which the client and nurse exchange information about how they view the nursing situation. The Theory of Goal Attainment by Imogene King was initially presented in the 1960s (Alligood, 2021). The concept is centered on achieving specific life objectives, as the term implies. It outlines how the nurse and patient collaborate to share information, establish objectives, and take action to reach those goals. Roles, stress, space, and time all impact achieving goals (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019). The nurse’s role is to analyze data used in the nursing process and to plan, carry out, and assess nursing care.
She established several terminologies to aid nurses in understanding her job, including the patient, a social creature with three basic requirements. The desire for health knowledge comes first and is the most important fundamental requirement. Second, it is critical to provide treatment that aims to prevent sickness (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019). Furthermore, when the patient is unable to help himself, care must be provided. She said that a patient’s life experiences, including coping with internal and external pressures using available resources, are part of their health (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019). The setting for human interaction is known as the environment. It involves the internal environment, which converts energy to allow individuals to adapt to changes in their outside environment. It also involves the outside world, consisting of formal and informal groups. A nurse is considered part of the patient’s environment, after all.
In King’s Theory of Goal Attainment, there are three interconnected systems. These three systems are the societal, interpersonal, and personal systems. Various notions are offered to each system. Perception, self, growth and development, body image, space, and time are the ideas of the personal system (Alligood, 2021). The interpersonal system describes interaction, communication, transaction, role, and stress. Organization, authority, power, position, and decision-making are social system ideas.
Some people view getting employed by a prestigious organization as “success” in and of itself. However, when deciding to pursue a profession in nursing, one should have the mindset that they should be a tool for assisting patients in achieving health. Setting health objectives with the patient and taking action to reach them is also vital (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019). Imogene M. King’s Theory of Goal Attainment centers on this procedure to steer and guide nurses in the nurse-patient relationship, working side by side with their patients to achieve appropriate health objectives. King’s Theory of Goal Attainment is a paradigm initially presented in the 1960s and, as the name suggests, is focused on achieving specific life objectives (Alligood, 2021). It outlines how the nurse and patient collaborate to share information, establish objectives, and take action to reach those goals.
The ideas of contact, perception, communication, transaction, self, role, stress, growth and development, time, and place have all been connected by King to form the basis of a goal achievement theory. Her approach focuses on the interaction between a nurse and a client, in which each individual provides unique perspectives on their roles and degrees of personal development. To achieve mutually agreed-upon goals, the nurse and client connect with one other first before communicating during a transaction (Smith, 2019). The connection takes place in a space defined by their acts and in time that is going ahead.
According to the Theory of Goal Attainment, nursing entails a series of actions, reactions, and interactions in which the client and nurse exchange information about how they perceive a nursing scenario. A process of human interactions in which the nurse and client communicate and each view the other and the circumstance is crucial. They decide on ways to attain goals after setting goals and considering various options (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019). According to this definition, the action is a series of behaviors, including mental and physical effort, and the reaction is a part of the action’s series of behaviors. According to King, a nurse’s primary objective is to assist patients in keeping up their health so they can perform their jobs (Smith, 2019). Promoting, maintaining, and restoring health and providing care for the sick, injured, and dying are all included in the nurse’s realm. “To interpret information in the nursing process to plan, implement, and evaluate nursing care” is the role of a professional nurse.
Transactions in nurse-patient relationships will promote growth and development. The transaction will occur if the nurse’s and the patient’s perceptions of their respective roles and performance are in line. Stress in the nurse-patient contact will arise if either the nurse or the patient (or both) feel role conflict. Mutual goal-setting and goal-achievement will take place if a nurse with specialized knowledge shares relevant information with the patient. Imogene King’s philosophy about people and life shaped her perceptions of the world, people, nursing, and relationships between nurses and patients (Smith, 2019). King’s conceptual framework and Theory of Goal Attainment were predicated on the notion that human interaction with the environment is the primary focus of nursing (Alligood, 2021). Nurses promote people’s health, enabling them to fulfill their societal obligations.
The first assumption is that nursing strongly emphasizes taking care of the patient as a human being. The second purpose of nursing is to provide for the health of both people and groups. Thirdly, people are open systems that continually interact with their surroundings. Together, the nurse and patient share information, agree on goals and take action to make those goals a reality. This is also the fundamental premise behind the nursing process. Patients view the world as a full-fledged person who interacts with other people and objects in their environment.
According to the hypothesis, evaluation happens when the parties interact. While the patient contributes knowledge about themselves and their view of the difficulties at hand to the dialogue, the nurse uses their particular expertise and abilities. The nurse collects information regarding the patient’s growth and development, sense of self, and current health state throughout this period (Smith, 2019). Data gathering and interpretation are predicated on perception (Smith, 2019). In order to communicate and translate, as well as to check whether the perception is accurate, communication is necessary. The information gathered during the evaluation is used to build this step (Smith, 2019). The nurse recognizes the issues, worries, and disruptions the patient is seeking assistance with to achieve goals.
The nurse assesses the patient in the assessment phase to see if the goals were accomplished. Determining whether or not objectives were accomplished is part of the evaluation. King’s theory’s assessment description talks about reaching objectives and the efficiency of nursing care. Helping patients reach their goals for improving their health is the ultimate objective of the nurse-patient interaction in the healthcare industry. The nursing approach outlined in King’s Theory of Goal Attainment allows a nurse to collaborate with a patient to accomplish those goals and provide genuine care.
The ability of nurses to comprehend goal attainment theory and outline a logical chain of events is a critical component of King’s conceptual framework and Theory of Goal Attainment. Concepts are generally defined and presented in real terms. King uses concepts theoretically drawn from the study literature and pretty unambiguous concepts (Alligood, 2021). Ten important principles are presented in her Theory of Goal Attainment. The notions are straightforward and taken from the research literature, establishing King’s work as essential for nursing knowledge development.
The notion of goal attainment has come under fire for having little practical use in nursing settings when patients cannot communicate effectively with the nurse. King argued that the principle is generally used in most nursing contexts (Zaccagnini & Pechacek, 2019). Another drawback is the lack of advancement in the use of the theory while giving nursing care to communities, families, or organizations. Additionally, King’s thesis has several contradictions that aid in understanding it (Smith, 2019). She makes it clear that nurses care about the health of groups, but she emphasizes nursing as taking place in a dyadic relationship. King claims that although the client and nurse are strangers, they cooperate to achieve their goals and emphasize the value of maintaining good health. King advanced nursing science by creating her conceptual framework and middle-range Theory of Goal Attainment. King offered a conceptual framework and middle-range theory that has shown to be helpful to nurses by emphasizing achieving objectives or results through nurse-patient collaborations. Nurses still use King’s work to enhance patient care in various settings with patients worldwide.
References
Alligood, M. R. (2021). Nursing Theorists and Their Work E-Book. Elsevier Gezondheidszorg.
Smith, M. C. (2019). Nursing Theories and Nursing Practice. F.A. Davis Company.
Zaccagnini, M., & Pechacek, J. M. (2019). The Doctor of Nursing Practice Essentials: A New Model for Advanced Practice Nursing: A New Model for Advanced Practice Nursing (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.