Orem’s self-care is a nursing theory that offers direction to the nurse practitioner on how to identify a patient’s deficit needs in getting well. The different levels of care range from educating the patient’s family to giving total attention. The theory explains how nurses can intervene to help patients maintain autonomy. It allows nurses to clearly understand their role in treatment, care, and prevention. The theory has been implemented in today’s world in attending different needs.
The theory can be applied in many ways, like actions by nurses to help re-establish the patient’s ability for self-care. They include guiding patients, performing care actions, teaching, ensuring a suitable environment for growth, and providing physical health. Orem’s theories combine three concepts self-care, deficit, and nursing systems. Help is given to patients to fulfill the requisites for patients. Nurses identify the insufficiency through the application of the theory and assessment. When patients go to the hospital, their data will be collected according to Orem’s theory (Yip, 2021). The essential conditioning factors will be the first data set to be taken, which includes age, gender, health state, development, social-cultural orientation, health care system, and living patterns.
According to the theory, the second data set is universal self-care requisites like breathing difficulty, fluid and food intake, elimination of waste from the body, activity level, and how to prevent hazards. Developmental health care requisites are the third and include the ability to feed self, prevention, and management of the conditions threatening normal development. Healthcare deviations is the fourth set and includes awareness of potential problems associated with a regimen, modification of self-image to incorporate changes in health status, and adjustment of lifestyle (Smith, 2019). Lastly, the problem is diagnosed, and a plan is set for the treatment. According to the theory, the nurse selects the required nursing systems to provide care once the need is identified. Attention is provided regarding the patient’s extent of deficit and helps patients achieve and maintain an appropriate level of self-care.
In conclusion, Orem’s theory has been successfully applied in the nursing practice since it has proved to bring out excellent outcomes in understanding patients’ level of need for care. When a person is sick several sets of data, including fundamental conditioning factors, universal health care requisites, developmental health, and health deviations are taken. This data is used to identify the plan for treatment and the level of care needed.
References
Smith, M. (2019). Nursing theories and nursing practice (5th ed.). F A Davis.
Yip, J. Y. (2021). Theory-based Advanced Nursing Practice: A practice update on the application of Orem’s self-care deficit nursing theory. SAGE Open Nursing, 7, pp 1–112. Web.