The nursing theory under analysis is Neuman systems model developed in 1970 by Betty Neuman, a counselor, professor, and community health nurse. This theory belongs to the middle-range nursing theories, as it includes enough variables to provide a solid abstract description of phenomena and, at the same time, it can be verified through testing and guides nursing practice strategies and theory-based research (Flaherty, 2013).

Theorist’s Background

Betty Neuman was born in 1924 in Lowel, Ohio. Betty’s father was a farmer who died from the chronic renal disease when she was eleven years old. Betty’s mother was a midwife who became the first inspiration for her to devote her life to medicine in general and nursing in particular. Thus, her childhood taught her the value of responsibility and self-reliance that laid the basis for her future nursing career (“Betty Neuman,” 2013).

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From the early age, she was interested in the concepts of human behavior. During the World War II, she worked as an aircraft technician but later, she decided to join the Cadet Nursing Corps program focused on providing accelerated nursing education. After eighteen months of training, in 1947, she graduated from People’s Hospital School of Nursing in Akron, Ohio, with honors and obtained the diploma as a Registered Nurse (“Betty Neuman,” 2013).

After visiting her relatives in California, Betty decided to start her career there. She changed multiple professions. She worked as a head nurse at Los Angeles County General Hospital, a school nurse, an industrial nurse, and a clinical instructor at the University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles (UCLA) specializing in the areas of communicable diseases, critical care, and medical-surgical nursing. In 1957, Betty completed a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) with a double major in psychology and public health from UCLA. In a short time, she married and helped her husband establish his medical practice. Her only child was born in 1959 (“Betty Neuman,” 2013).

In 1966, Betty completed her Master of Science in public health consultation and mental health from UCLA. In half a year, she was hired as a department chair in the graduate program at UCLA. Her teaching methods were highly evaluated, and she decided to develop a nursing model. She did not write a book at that time yet, but she had already developed her concepts known to Sr. Callista Roy and Joan Riehl-Sisca who mentioned them in their book called Conceptual Models of Nursing Practice in 1971.

Then, in 1972, Betty published an article entitled “A model for teaching total person approach to patient problems” which served as a draft of her model. For ten years, she was refining her concepts and finally, in 1982, she published her book called “The Neuman System Model: Application to Nursing Education and Practice” (“Betty Neuman,” 2013).

In 1985, Betty received a doctorate from Pacific Western University in clinical psychology. Being the first who defined nursing roles in mental health, Donna Aquilina and Betty Neuman created a position of a nurse counselor in Los Angeles community crisis centers. In 1988, Betty founded the Neuman Systems Model Trustees Group, Inc. which focused on the preservation of her nursing theory for the community. In 2009, she resigned from the position of the director but still serves as a consultant (“Betty Neuman,” 2013).

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Thus, being interested in human behavior from her childhood and being inspired by her mother’s profession as a midwife, Betty Neuman firmly decided that she would devote her life to the nursing profession, and her experiences as a nurse only reinforced her determination. Her model was also influenced by the works of the philosophers Cornu and de Chardin on wholeness in the system, the biologist Von Bertalanffy and the philosopher László on their general system theory, the psychologist Lazarus on his stress and coping theory, and the endocrinologist Seyle on his stress theory (Flaherty, 2013).

The authors who first mentioned Betty Neuman’s Systems Model were Sr. Callista Roy and Joan Riehl-Sisca in 1971, which was a crucial reference to her work. After Neuman’s theory was recognized, numerous researchers began referring to it and using it in the studies and practices. One of th