Sister Callista Roy

Nursing students frequently have to explicate a nursing theory or theorist that defines how various models of care have come into being. Sister Callista Roy provides one of the most famous models of care for nurses. Get help on a research paper that explains her Roy Adaptation Model or research on her life that will reveal how she came about her nursing theory.

In 1976 Sister Callista Roy published her first book on nursing theory entitled, "Introduction to Nursing: An Adaptation Model". In 1984, Sister Callista Roy polished her nursing theory and modified her book. In 1994, she published a related book entitled, "The Roy Adaptation Model: The Definitive Statement". The Roy Adaptation Model is defined as "the process and outcome whereby the thinking and feeling person uses conscious awareness and choice to create human and environmental integration." Essential elements of this adaptation are considered to be the following:

• A focus on the person receiving nursing care
• Adapting nursing goals to any change
• Adapting to the health, environment, and the facilitation of evolving care

All of these elements are interrelated and modes of adaptation are necessary to address these elements.

Within the clinical practice area, the adaptation model is particularly well suited for the primary nurse. The primary nurse model includes extensive contact with the patient on a day-to-day basis. Sister Callista Roy's nursing theory requires individual assessment, intervention and evaluation of the patient and this is best accomplished outside the guise of team nursing or counterproductive short term nursing contacts.

Basic elements to Roy's Adaptation Model, the nursing theory developed by Sister Callista Roy, are patiency, goal of nursing, health, environment, and direction of nursing activities. By examining the components that comprise the adaptation model, benefits to the community can be revealed. The assumptions of Roy's nursing theory is that health and illness are inevitable facets to life and adapting to the stimuli that surrounds us indirectly effects the health of the community.

The concept of Roy's theory is to provide a continuum between good health and the community. To understand that the patient has constant changing needs that are stimulated through various contextual and residual factors brings family, community, and society in to focus. By using nursing in the format of Roy's adaptive model, the patient can experience a higher level of adjustment to his or her environment. When applied in the broader sense, this can in turn provide better health for the community. Finally, the nursing theory will better assess, diagnose, intervene, evaluate, and set goals for the patient to regulate his or her health status, which is directly respondent to the surrounding community.