Virginia Henderson's nursing philosophy and educational framework

MARKETING VS. CSR

Henderson Nursing Philosophy

classification of theories Grid

Virginia Henderson

Classification Focus

Historical Period

She graduated from her first nursing program in 1921 and her career was at its apex in the 1970's as she was one of the more prominent authors of nursing textbooks through the 1970's (and before that dating back to the late 1950's). She was a research associated at Yale until she died in 1996. She died that same year at the age of 1998. Basically, her career was active in some form for nearly seven decades but it was highest in the middle part from the 1950's to 1970's.

Educational background

Virginia Henderson started her medicine career after she graduated from the United States Army School of Nursing in about 1921. She later received her bachelor's degree in 1931 and her master's degree. Her Bachelor of Science as well as her master's from Teachers College at Columbia University.

Philosophical Foundations

Henderson's philosophy is summarized quite succinctly in the two textbook editions she wrote. The book had two primary foci, those being individual and global. She asserted that healthcare will have to be reformed and improved by nurses who teach patients how to take care of themselves and in what ways. An example of this in action was cutting out as much jargon and confusing verbiage so as to avoid confusing patients with terms they did not understand. This means that terms, best practices and so forth are stated and covered in straight English. This makes it much easier to help patients help themselves and thus lead to less need for medical care as one lives their life.

Level of Abstraction

As noted above, Ms. Henderson kept it quite simple….individuals and global. People have the ability and responsibility to manage themselves and a global group of people doing this (or not doing this) will lead to the aggregate results. People teach each other good habits as well as bad habits. Also as noted above, nurses are on the front line of identifying gaps in what people are doing and what they are doing wrong and correcting all of the above. If nurses do this enough, this leads to a drop in bad habits and a rise in good habits.

School of Thought

One thing abuot Ms. Henderson is that she was a writer who hated to write. Perhaps she realized that she can only do so much in person (especially in a pre-internet world). As such, her two textbooks were a way for her to have a lesson repeat itself many times over with less effort required from her. She was also staunchly against healthcare operating for a profit. She heavily favored universal healthcare and also asserted that patients should keep their own healthcare records rather than only or mostly relying on healthcare providers to do so.

Primary Focus

As noted above, she pointed towards nurses helping patients help themselves, to have a healthcare system that was focused on patient outcomes and not just the bottom line. She also wanted end of life to be dignified and measured. Indeed, she was able to realize this for herself and it makes sense that she would want others to have the same.

Model/Criteria Used for Evaluation (From Meleis -- Chapter 10 Table 10-1 with Rationale for using it)

Give the above, the internal criticism points from Barnum (as noted in Melesis) would be clarify and consistency and probably adequacy as well. For Description of Theory under Chinn and Kramer, structure and concepts would be huge. For the analysis of nursing models, the focus, content and credibility would hold true. For example, a nurse is credible because they have medical knowledge and experience and thus the patients are more apt to take them seriously and react accordingly. For external criticism, utility and scope of theory stand out. For critical reflection, there is clarity again as well as accessibility. For anlaysis of theories and such, it again comes to content and scope but can also include empirical adequacy and significance.

Summary of the evaluation: Outline will vary depending on model/criteria used:

Overall, Ms. Henderson had a fairly simple but robust view of things. Of course, her assertion that no profit-based healthcare outfits be involved and that a centralized (presumably public sector outfit) should be running things has been undercut by what has actually happened and just how many misteps and mistakes that government has seemed to make. However, access to healthcare is very much deemed a right and it really should be, but should be done right.