This paper examines Virginia Henderson’s middle-range theory for primary nursing care. This theory aimed to identify the fourteen basic needs that are the foundation for nursing care. Virginia Henderson is an innovator who crafted her definition of nursing in 1955, which many generations of nursing students still learn and refer to today as a source of guidance.
Virginia Henderson, who made significant contributions to the nursing sector over her 60-year career, was born in March 1897. The desire to nurse was ignited in her mind for the first time during the First World War, which motivated her to help the sick and wounded. Henderson began her nursing career in the Army after completion of her nursing school; later, she came back to New York City for her graduate studies and acquired a master’s degree (Butts & Rich, 2011). With an emphasis on teaching, Henderson published her well-known Principles and Practice of Nursing and taught nursing at the college level at Teachers College and Yale University.
Butts and Rich (2011) attribute Virginia Henderson’s contributions to nursing research advancement, compassionate, comprehensive patient care, and the development of one of the most accurate definitions of nursing. According to Henderson’s idea, nursing care is developed using these fourteen fundamental demands. Six of the fourteen needs deal with finding one’s purpose in life and defending oneself; the other eight are directly tied to bodily processes. According to Virginia’s theory, basic nursing service is about helping others maintain their basic needs to survive.
The fourteen basic needs encompassed:
(Butts and Rich, 2011)
Virginia Henderson, as shown by the authors Butts and Rich (2011), considered her work as not a nursing theory, and therefore, she did not define the concepts of the theory. One of the nurse metaparadigm ideas that reportedly stemmed from her work has been discovered: person, environment, nursing, and health. Henderson believed that the person was the patient, which was made up of the biological, psychological, sociological, and spiritual aspects of the patient that responded to the 14 essential nursing components (Butts & Rich, 2011). Environment, as portrayed by Henderson, consists of three subdivisions such as physical, behavioral, and biological (Butts & Rich, 2011). Among the physical elements are water, sunlight, and oxygen. Behavioral aspects include how people interact with one another at social gatherings, including religious ceremonies. According to Butts and Rich (2011), all living things that make up the environment, such as plants and animals, are considered biological components. Notwithstanding an ambiguous conception of health, nursing is an action rather than a theory, that is, the act of nursing, and nurses need to touch the skin of a patient to get to know the desires of the patient (Butts & Rich, 2011). Butts and Rich (2011) state that Henderson defines a nurse as an independent practitioner, provided that the nurse refrains from diagnosing, prescribing, or treating patients, as these are the responsibilities of physicians.
Henderson’s approach focuses mainly on the patient with few things like respiratory health, nutrition, body elimination, rest and sleep, body mechanism, communication, cleanness, family, religion, play, and work (Butts & Rich, 2011). As mentioned, this theory’s framework is split into two primary categories: the first eight basic requirements directly relate to the body’s functioning. At the same time, the remaining six relate to a broader sense of life. Henderson provides instances of each particular basic need in order to illustrate the various methods in which patient requirements might be met, as reported by Butts and Rich (2011). For example, pulmonary ventilation and the regulation of respiration, which are the needs people must have to breathe normally, were covered by Henderson (Butts & Rich, 2011).
Henderson’s theory is relevant in every aspect of nursing practice. There are several components to this philosophy that cover every aspect of nursing. Specific ideas from Henderson’s theory can be helpful to me in my day-to-day nursing practice in my specialization, labor, and delivery. The fourth element emphasized by Henderson, shifting and keeping the desired positions during labor, is a not-readily-missable aspect of labor. Besides my role as a charge nurse in the busy labor and delivery unit, I must help other nurses progress the labor and allow for the baby’s birth simultaneously.
Theories are the nurse’s reference and guidelines for clinical practice that help them follow evidence-based care. As Yazdimoghaddam and colleagues (2021) pointed out, nurse practitioners administer care for organ donation and transplantation based on this theory in nursing. The leaders of our family nurses model how to medically and psychologically care for potential donors and their families. This endorsement of Dr Henderson’s theory for actual clinical practice would ensure that these neurologically dead or potential organ donors are being attended to with the correct emotional needs of the nurse while adhering to the fourteen aspects of nursing care (Yazdimoghaddam et al., 2021).
Personally, I believe Henderson’s fourteen nursing care aspects are trustworthy manuals for daily nursing work. Gligor and Domnariu (2020) state that one helpful way that Henderson’s theory benefits nurses in the real world is by providing them with a more comprehensive grasp of how to prioritize and understand everyday patient care. By utilizing Henderson’s hypothesis of fourteen parts, medical attendants can utilize fundamental nursing care assignments and give viable nursing care while focusing on the patient.
Since 1978, Virginia Henderson has been formulating a theory known as the “fourteen components of basic nursing care,” which lists the fourteen fundamental standards of nursing care that nurses must adhere to when providing patient care. Henderson’s theory still applies across various nursing disciplines and yields experimentally verified results. Though the study has confirmed the relevance of this theory, future research will continue to provide evidence about other uses of this theory for further education of nurses.
Butts, J. B., & Rich K. L. (2011) Philosophies and Theories for Advances Nursing Practice (1st edition). Jones and Bartlett Learning
Gligor, L., & Domnariu, C. D. (2020). Patient Care Approach Using Nursing Theories- Comparative Analysis of Orem’s Self-Care Deficit Theory and Henderson’s Model. Acta Medica Transilvanica, 25(3), 11-14. https:/doi.org/10.2478/amtsb-2020-0019
Yazdimoghaddam, H., Manzari, Z. S., Heydari, A., & Mohammadi, E. (2021). Improving psychological security and empowerment: New model for nurses to care for potential organ donors. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, 10.