NSG 511 Week 5 Empirical Indicators Recent
NSG 511 Week 5 Empirical Indicators Recent
NSG 511 Week 5 Empirical Indicators Recent
Empirical Indicators
Nursing knowledge helps in patient care and it is obtained from nursing science, nursing experience, and personal experiences. A component key to nursing knowledge is empirical indicators. Empirical indicators refer to actual instruments, experimental conditions or procedures followed when assessing or observing concepts linked to middle-range theory (Ryan et al., 2019). Empirical indicators offer data that helps in testing the middle-range theories. The indicators offer data that one can calculate as quantitative scores or sort into qualitative categories. The purpose of this paper is to use empirical indicators in line with the Dorothea Orem Self-Care theory.
Orem Self Care Theory
Self-care theory was coined by Dorothea Orem as she tried to improve the quality of nursing in general hospitals in her state. Nurses use the theory to guide and improve practice since it aligns with other validated theories, laws, and principles (Blok, 2017). The theory covers self-care, which is a practice of activities initiated or performed by an individual to maintain life, health, and wellbeing. It also revolves around self-care agency, which denotes the human ability to engage in self-care that is dictated by factors like age, health, developmental state, resources, social-cultural experience, and life experience. The main focus of the theory is self-care, preventing illness and promoting independence (Blok, 2017). The theory points out the need for nursing care because it projects that not everyone can provide their care. Disabled patients have to receive specialized assistance to meet their needs and optimize their functionality.
Theory Analysis
Orem’s theory provides nursing practice with a comprehensive base. It specifies when nursing care is needed and can be applied in different nursing practice settings. Nursing care is essential when one has a limitation or deficit that makes it hard to maintain self-care. The theory premise is that individuals can take care of themselves and their dependents (Younas, 2017). The theory is linked to research, clinical practice and nursing goals. The theory can be used in a research program to establish self-care behaviors and self-care requisites that match a specified clinical population.
Applicability of Orem’s Theory
The concepts of self-care theory are clearly defined which makes it easier to identify empirical indicators for each concept. The theory is readily applied because it has well defined theoretical entities that can be easily measured (Younas, 2017). Several instruments have been developed and validate and are used to measure aspects of self-care theory. Researchers have managed to operationalize concepts in an empirically testable manner. An example is the Community Care Deficit Nursing Model that is used in community care settings. The model signifies that Orem’s theory has a theoretical framework that is applicable in various practice settings and hypotheses that can be derived from various nursing concepts stipulated in the theory.
Practice Setting Example
An ideal project is the identification of self-care deficits and self-care abilities among hospitalized patients with heart failure. The project would offer valuable information that can be followed to come up with an educational plan on the topic as well as results that generate hypotheses to enhance nursing knowledge (Hagran & Fakharany, 2015). The proposed study will assess whether a relationship exists between the heart failure self-care deficits and quality of life indicators for patients suffering from heart failure. The hypothesis that will guide the study is; increased self-care abilities improve the quality of life of patients suffering from heart failure.
The project is selected because, annually, there are 1, 084,000 hospitalizations linked to heart failure. The hospitalizations require 34.8 billion dollars, which is a significant healthcare cost (Hagran & Fakharany, 2015). Additionally, proper treatment and management of heart failure can reduce healthcare expenditures as well as mortality rates. Reduced self-care abilities result in frequent hospitalizations and poor quality of life. An educational plan would help the patients learn about self-care which would enable them to control their lives. The patients can learn ways to take care of themselves and follow the prescribed treatment which would enhance their functional capacity as well as their quality of life.
The study will be guided by the self-care theory. The framework is selected because the variables and hypotheses of the study relate to the concepts of the theory. The study variables are a nursing agency, therapeutic self-care demands, self-care requisites, self-care deficit, self-care agency and self-care (Hagran & Fakharany, 2015). The theory will help in identifying the heart failure self-care deficits that affect the quality of life. Once the self-care deficits are identified, it will be easier to define self-requisites that should be addressed to foster self-care agency in patients with heart failure.
The study will have 30 participants with heart failure and it will adopt a quantitative, cross-sectional research design. The empirical indicator that will help in the study is the Self-Care of Heart Failure Index (SCHFI) scale. The scale assesses self-care, self-care management and self-care maintenance (Hagran & Fakharany, 2015). Additionally, the study will assess the quality of life using the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure (MHLIF) questionnaire. The questionnaire offers scores for physical and emotional dimensions as well as a total score. Once the data is obtained from the participants, correlations will be computed to determine if there is a relationship between self-care maintenance, self-care management, self-care confidence, total self-care scores the physical quality of life, emotional quality of life, and total of quality of life scores.
Conclusion
Empirical indicators refer to instruments, experiments condition or procedures followed when testing the middle-range theories. An example is Orem’s self-care theory whose aim is to prevent illness and promote independence. The theory pints out when nursing care is needed and can be used in research to establish self-care behaviors and self-care requisites that align with a clinical population. Self-care theory has well defined theoretical entities that make it easier to identify empirical indicators. The concepts have been transformed into empirically testable aspects like the Community Care Deficit Nursing Model. For the current practice, a proposed study would be the identification of self-care abilities among heart failure patients. The patients would answer the Self-Care of Heart Failure Index (SCHFI) scale to establish their self-care abilities as well as the Living with Heart Failure (MHLIF) questionnaire to establish their quality of life. The data obtained would be correlated to establish a relationship and eventually generate an education plan that addresses patient needs and enhances nursing knowledge.
References
Blok, A. C. (2017). A middle‐range explanatory theory of self‐management behavior for collaborative research and practice. In Nursing forum, 52(2), 138-146.
Hagran, A., & Fakharany, A. (2015). Critique of Orem’s theory. The Journal of Middle East and North Africa Sciences, 1(5), 12-17.
Ryan, P., Weiss, M., & Papanek, P. (2019). A substruction approach to assessing the theoretical validity of measures. Journal of Nursing Measurement, 27(1), 126-145.
Younas, A. (2017). A foundational analysis of Dorothea Orem’s self-care theory and evaluation of its significance for nursing practice and research. Creative Nursing, 23(1), 13-23.
As discussed in Week 1, empirical indicators are measurements in practice. Now that you have identified and built your practice model, you can start looking for ways to test it. This assignment is designed to help you better align your practice model to the practice setting.
Explain your chosen empirical indicators by presenting them in the form of testable hypotheses or by explaining what data would result from testing them.
APA Writing Checklist
Use this document as a checklist for each paper you will write throughout your GCU graduate program. Follow specific instructions indicated in the assignment and use this checklist to help ensure correct grammar and APA formatting. Refer to the APA resources available in the GCU Library and Student Success Center.
☐ APA paper template (located in the Student Success Center/Writing Center) is utilized for the
correct format of the paper. APA style is applied, and format is correct throughout.
☐ The title page is present. APA format is applied correctly. There are no errors.
☐ The introduction is present. APA format is applied correctly. There are no errors.
☐ Topic is well defined.
☐ Strong thesis statement is included in the introduction of the paper.
☐ The thesis statement is consistently threaded throughout the paper and included in the conclusion.
☐ Paragraph development: Each paragraph has an introductory statement, two or three sentences as the body of the paragraph, and a transition sentence to facilitate the flow of information. The sections of the main body are organized to reflect the main points of the author. APA format is applied correctly. There are no errors.
☐ All sources are cited. APA style and format are correctly applied and are free from error.
☐ Sources are completely and correctly documented on a References page, as appropriate to assignment and APA style, and format is free of error.
Scholarly Resources: Scholarly resources are written with a focus on a specific subject discipline and usually written by an expert in the same subject field. Scholarly resources are written for an academic audience.
Examples of Scholarly Resources include: Academic journals, books written by experts in a field, and formally published encyclopedias and dictionaries.
Peer-Reviewed Journals: Peer-reviewed journals are evaluated prior to publication by experts in the journal’s subject discipline. This process ensures that the articles published within the journal are academically rigorous and meet the required expectations of an article in that subject discipline.
Empirical Journal Article: This type of scholarly resource is a subset of scholarly articles that reports the original finding of an observational or experimental research study. Common aspects found within an empirical article include: literature review, methodology, results, and discussion.
Adapted from “Evaluating Resources: Defining Scholarly Resources,” located in Research Guides in the GCU Library.
☐ The writer is clearly in command of standard, written, academic English. Utilize writing resources such as Grammarly, LopesWrite report, and ThinkingStorm to check your writing.
Also Read: NSG 511 Week 4 Theory in Practice Recent