Theory Application Paper: Comfort Theory
Instructions
The purpose of the Theory Application Paper is to help you apply your selected nursing theory to your specific area of practice.
1. Select a Nursing Theory- Select one specific nursing theorist and nursing middle-range theory that best fits your area of practice. Ex. Pender’s Health Promotion Model, Kolcaba’s Comfort Theory, Beck’s Postpartum Depression Theory, etc)
2. APA Title Page- (Use Running heads; No Abstract Needed)
1. Include the following information on the title page:
Assignment name: Theory Application Paper: Name of Nursing Theory (Ex. Theory Application Paper: Swanson’s Theory of Caring in Obstetrics)
Your Name
Course Number and Name of Course
Professor’s Name
Name of University
3. Introductory paragraph – Capture the reader’s attention (ex. Grabbing statistics) and introduce the rationale for selecting the specific nursing theory for your area of nursing over other nursing theories (Do not write in first person; Include a purpose statement of what you will describe in the paper as the last sentence of the introductory paragraph.) Next, begin the Body of Paper.
4. Theory Description (Level 1 Header) Briefly describe the theory. Give overview of theory purpose, scope, concepts, structure, and unique focus.
5. Rationale (Level 1 Header) Discuss the rationale or selecting the theory for implementation in your specific practice setting. (Do not use first person)
6. Implementation Plan (Level 1 Header) Describe a plan to implement the theory in your area of practice for your entire department or organization.
7. Barriers to Implementation (Level 1 or 2 Header, your choice) Discuss potential barriers or challenges to the implementation plan and how to overcome these barriers and challenges.
8. Conclusion (Level 1 Header) Conclusion paragraph with concluding statements to summarize the content and re-state or re-phrase the original purpose statement.
9. APA Reference Page- Please be sure to support your paper with in-text citations. Please use 5 peer-reviewed resources.
Additional Instructions: Your assignment should be typed into a Word or other word processing document, formatted in APA style. Paper should be a minimum of 4-5 pages in length, excluding the title and references pages. (You may increase the number of pages of the body of the paper up to 7-8 pages if needed). This is a scholarly paper and should not be written in first person. Paragraphs should have a minimum of 3 sentences. Paraphrasing should be done using in-text citations. Direct quotes should be rare and used only when the content can be said in no other way. If using direct quotes, you must include page or paragraph number.
Sample Answer
Nursing plays a crucial role in improving the health of individuals and the community at large. The nursing process involves various activities, which include assessment, diagnosis, planning, intervention, outcomes, and evaluation (Gray, 2018). All these nursing actions aim at solving a problem deliberately, logically, and rationally. Nursing practice is guided by various concepts, include theory. A nursing theory is a structured model based on the knowledge that helps define the scope of nursing practice (Gray, 2018). Therefore, a theory is a crucial cornerstone of nursing practice. One of the benefits of nursing theory is that it provides a framework that can be applied to guide research to generate knowledge or information necessary for nursing practice (Younas & Quennell, 2019). There are several categories of nursing theory. One of them is the middle-range theories. These theories focus on a particular area of nursing practice, but they tend to be less abstract and emerge from research or other theories of similar disciplines (Gray, 2018). Kolcaba’s comfort theory is categorized under this group of nursing theories. Thus, this paper aim at discussing the purpose, scope, concepts, structure, and the unique focus of the comfort theory, how it can be implemented in nursing practice, the possible barriers that may be encountered, and the remedies to the challenges.
Theory Description
The comfort theory was first established by Katherine Kolcaba in the 1990s (Gray, 2018). The theorist was born in 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied nursing at St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing, whereby she obtained a diploma in nursing. She also attended Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and Case Western Reserve University in 1987, where she obtained her Ph. D. in nursing. Besides, the theorist specialized in various nursing practice areas, including gerontology, nursing theory, nursing research, and comfort studies.
The comfort theory’s purpose is to provide a framework to guide or facilitate the nursing process (assessment, treatment, evaluation) to enable nurses to achieve or enhance patient comfort. Once comfort has been achieved, the patient will be able to engage more fully in health-seeking behaviors (Gray, 2018). Thus, the nursing model supports that the immediate desired outcome of nursing care is comfort.
According to Kolcaba, comfort exists in different aspects. They include relief, ease, and transcendence. All of them are realized differently. For instance, in a situation where a patient is experiencing post-operative pain, the stressor can be relieved by using the prescribed analgesia (Harvey & Kovalesky, 2018). In that case, the patient is said to achieve comfort in relief form. Secondly, in a situation whereby a patient realizes his/her comfort through satisfaction/ contentment, the individual is said to experience comfort in ease form. This can happen in a case whereby a depressed person settles down after the issues causing the mood disorder get addressed (Harvey & Kovalesky, 2018). Lastly, transcendence occurs when the patient gets to the state of comfort after they rise above their problems.
Besides, the theory provides four contexts under whereby the patient can achieve his/her comfort. One of them is the physical context. This refers to any form of comfort that one realizes after modifying internal and external settings. The other one is psychospiritual (Harvey & Kovalesky, 2018). This context entails those factors associated with one’s internal consciousness. They include identity, esteem, and sexuality. The theorist also supports that the environmental aspect plays a role in one’s well-being. This includes the patient’s external surroundings, such as the residential area. The last perspective is social-cultural (Harvey & Kovalesky, 2018). This refers to one’s family and societal relationships. The comfort theory’s unique focus includes recognizing the role of the family in the patient’s comfort level.
Rationale
My specialized area of nursing is medical-surgical nursing. Med surge nurse works with doctors in a hospital or a surgical facility to offer a wide range of health-related care, including pre-operation and post-operation patient care. They handle other specific activities such as preparing patients for surgical procedures and inform family members. Secondly, they help the patients recover after a treatment procedure and educate patients, families, other medical professionals regarding the latest advancements in the healthcare field. Also, a medical surge nurse diagnoses patients to identify their healthcare needs and provide them with a high level of comfort to improve their well-being.
Medical-surgical patients have various comfort needs. One of them includes the physical stress or pain associated with their illness, diagnosis, and treatment procedures like operation or surgery. Secondly, they experience psychological stress caused by the anxiety of being in the hospital setting, fear of the unknown, loss of control, and new diagnoses. Thirdly, they experience social stressors associated with interrupted family dynamics caused by them being in the hospital. Lastly, environmental stressors also affect the health of med surge patients negatively. This can be due to being out of their natural element (DeWit, Stromberg, & Dallred, 2016). Besides, the families of the med surge patients also experience various comfort needs, including interruption of the usual routine for families, financial hardships associated with the medical costs, and the new diagnoses that require a change in the family’s lifestyle (Harvey & Kovalesky, 2018). Therefore, the nursing theory is crucial in the medical-surgical area of practice. For example, it provides a theoretical framework that a med surge nurse can follow to identify the comfort needs of the patients and provide them with a high level of comfort to improve their well-being. In practice, a medical-surgical patient may experience stress associated with his/her new diagnosis. In this case, a nurse can help the patient alleviate the psychological stressors to provide comfort through ease sense. The patient will be to comply with or make an informed decision regarding the treatment plans offered to him/her to improve his/her health.
