Dorothea Orem Theory Overview, Scenario, and Utilization
1. In Dorothea Orem's Self-Care theory, person, environment, health, and nursing play key roles. Person, according to Orem (1985), is "an integrated whole, a unity functioning biologically, symbolically and socially;" Orem describes persons as being capable of self-knowledge and engaging in "deliberate action" (Hanucharumkul, 1989, p. 367). Environment is "a set of conditions that motivate a person to establish appropriate goals and adjust behaviour to achieve the results specified by the goals" (Orem, 1985, as cited in Hanucharumkul, 1989, p. 367). It refers not only to the person's surroundings but also of any physical and psychosocial factors that affect recovery (Hanucharumkul, 1989, p. 367). Health for Orem (1985) is "a state of wholeness or integrity of human beings" that is characterized by structural and functional wholeness (Hanucharumkul, 1989, p. 368). Orem (1985) views nursing as "a profession which provides services to its society," and she felt that nursing's objectives were what distinguished it from other disciplines (Hanucharumkul, 1989, pp. 368-369). She described the goal of nursing as being "to help people meet their own demands for self-care on a therapeutic and a continuous basis" (Hanucharumkul, 1989, p. 369). Achieving this goal demands doing for patients in a "wholly compensatory system," doing with them in a "partly compensatory system," or developing a system that supports and educates them as they do for themselves (Kelompok, Sardi, Ridwan, & Abdillah, 2008).
2. A patient scenario that will be used for the application of the model is that of Alan, a 43-year-old construction worker who sustained a broken right femur on his job's construction site. Alan is single and lives alone, and he describes himself as a "man's man" who likes to do things for himself. He states that he feels uncomfortable relying on others to meet his needs for h...