It is important to understand nursing theory for a couple of reasons. The first is that nursing theory forms the basis for how the nursing role has evolved in health care today. There is a saying that in order to understand where one is going, it is necessary to understand where one has been. For this reason alone, it is important to understand how nursing theory has evolved over time, and how nurses today see their roles, and how those roles fit within the greater context of the health care system. If we look at seminal works like Jacox (1974) we can get a pretty good picture of how nursing was viewed up until the modern age, but then we need to see how the profession has evolved in the information age as well. The sorts of philosophical debates about what nursing is and what it should be form the foundation for the profession today and tomorrow, and it is highly valuable to be familiar with this discourse (Meleis, 1992).Because there are so many different nursing theories, it is important to have grounding in each for a couple of other reasons. The first is that different nurses study in different places, and thus have been influenced by a number...

If one is to lead a team of nurses, then one must understand a little something about the ideas and philosophies that underpin how those nurses approach their roles. It is much easier to speak to someone in a language that they understand than to speak to them in a language they do not. The other thing is that by understanding the different nursing theories, you can pick and choose the ones most applicable to your situation. A good example is the culture care theory – in a geography with a homogenous population this theory might not have a lot of value, but there are definitely markets in which this theory can be quite valuable because of how heterogeneous the population is (Leininger, 2002). As such, having a sound foundation in different theories gives one a much better concept of how to apply different theories to get the best results out of different situations – not knowing the theories could easily leave the leader in a position of lacking proper guidance for specific situations.

References

Jacox, A. (1974) Theory construction in nursing: An overview. Nursing Research. 1…