Nursing theories play an important role in guiding nursing practice. Nursing theories act as frameworks for knowledge development that is utilized in making health-related decisions for the patients.
The theories also provide a better understanding of the human experiences with illnesses as well as health in an institution of healthcare. Nursing theories also guide nursing research. Nurses use concepts from nursing theories as the underpinnings of their research. Nursing researches evaluate the effectiveness of nursing interventions based on whether the goals stated in a theory have been achieved or not.
Furthermore, knowledge from nursing theories elicit more issues in nursing that can be solved and understood better utilizing concepts from the theory. Therefore, this research paper examines the adaptation theory of nursing by Sister Callista Roy. The paper examines the background of the theory, describes it, its evaluation, and application to nursing.
Theory Background
Sister Callista Roy developed the adaptation theory in 1976. Born in 1939, Roy studied a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Mount Saint Mary’s College in 1963. She also got a master’s degree in nursing in 1966 from the University of California. She proceeded to get a doctoral degree in nursing from the same university in 1977.
Roy developed her theory of adaptation after working with Dorothy Johnsons when she was developing her conceptual model for nursing. Roy identified from her experience as a pediatric nurse that children demonstrated significant resilience in care despite the challenges due to their health problems (Spraga-Spencer, 2020).
Roy developed the concepts of her model between 1964 and 1966 when she was at the University of California. Roy operationalized the model in 1968 where it was adopted for use as a philosophical foundation for the nursing curriculum in Mount Saint Mary’s College of nursing.
Roy has extensive experience as a professional nurse. She worked as an associated professor as well as chairperson for the nursing department at Mount Saint Mary’s College. She also worked as a profession at University of Portland and Mount Saint Mary’s College. She was the clinical nurse scholar for neuroscience in the University of California between 1983 and 1985 (Zerwekh & Garneau, 2020).
The other professional contributions of Roy to nursing includes the development of the coping and philosophical underpinnings of the adaptation model for use in nursing epistemology and founding of the Boston Based Adaptation Research in Nursing Society. Since inception of the Roy’s adaptation model, its use has gained significant relevance and need in the modern nursing practice and research.
Roy’s adaptation theory mainly aims at assisting the vulnerable populations such as the patients to build the resilience they need in overcoming a disease. Roy’s model strives to ensure that patients have the abilities and power to achieve their optimum level of functioning (Smith, 2019). As a result, successful adaptation to an illness is perceived to a critical determinant of health and wellbeing in Roy’s model of adaptation.
Concepts of Roy’s Model of Adaptation
The model of adaptation by Calista Roy has five concepts that relate to nursing. The concepts include adaptation, person, environment, health, and nursing. According to Roy, adaptation is the process in which an individual responds positively to environmental changes. According to her, people live in environments that constantly change.
The constant environmental changes demands that human beings respond positively to promote their optimum health. The ability of the human beings to adapt to their environment depends on factors such as self-reflection, conscious awareness, and the choice to integrate the needs of their environments into their daily lives.
perceived that conscious awareness is important in human life because it enables individuals to select the decisions or behaviors that minimize their exposure to circumstances that affect health adversely. Roy also considered adaptation to be a product of self-reflection. Accordingly, the individual’s experiences form part of the events that influence their adaptation (Peate, 2019).
Roy further identified that successful adaptation requires individuals to identify ways in which they can successfully integrate the constant environmental changes into their lives. The second concept in the adaptation model by Roy is the person. According to Roy’s model, the person is an adaptive system that responds to environmental changes. In this case, Roy perceived human beings to be in constant interaction with their environments.
The environmental conditions change in a constant manner, wh