21 Nursing Problems (Abdellah)

• Faye G. Abdellah was born on March 13, 1919 in New York City.
• The core of nursing is patient/client problems that focus on the patient and his/her problems.
• Nursing is based on an art and science that molds the attitudes, intellectual competencies, and technical skills of the individual nurse into the desire and ability to help people, sick or well, cope with their health needs.
• Faye G. Abdellah earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing, a master’s degree, and a doctorate from Columbia University, and completed additional graduate studies in science at Rutgers University.
• Faye G. Abdellah served as the Chief Nurse Officer and Deputy U.S. Surgeon General, U.S. Public Health Service before retiring in 1993 with the rank of Rear Admiral.
• Faye G. Abdellah retired from her position as dean of the Graduate School of Nursing, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 2000.
• Faye G. Abdellah's theory of nursing includes the identification of nursing problems, nursing diagnoses, judgment in selecting the next step in solving the client’s nursing problem, nursing functions, and a metaparadigm that emphasizes prevention and rehabilitation.
• Faye G. Abdellah's metaparadigm includes the concepts of having physical, emotional, and sociological needs, being recipients of nursing, health, or achieving of it is the purpose of nursing services, and the environment in which the client lives.
• Faye G. Abdellah's major concepts include a model of nursing that refers to a nursing diagnosis during a time in which nurses were taught that diagnoses were not part of their role in health care, and a theory that has combined the concepts of health, nursing problems, and problem-solving.
• Problem-solving is an activity that is inherently logical in nature.
• Sustenal care needs include facilitating the maintenance of a supply of oxygen to all body cells, facilitating the maintenance of nutrition of all body cells, facilitating the maintenance of elimination, facilitating the maintenance of fluid and electrolyte balance, recognizing the physiological responses of the body to disease conditions, facilitating the maintenance of regulatory mechanisms and functions, and facilitating the maintenance of sensory function.
• Remedial care needs include identifying and accepting positive and negative expressions, feelings, and reactions, identifying and accepting the interrelatedness of emotions and organic illness, facilitating the maintenance of effective verbal and non-verbal communication, promoting the development of productive interpersonal relationships, facilitating progress toward achievement of personal spiritual goals, creating and/or maintaining a therapeutic environment, and facilitating awareness of self as an individual with varying physical, emotional, and developmental needs.
• The needs of patients are divided into four categories: sustenal care needs, remedial care needs, restorative care needs, and basic to all patients.
• The framework focuses on nursing practice and individual patients.
• Restorative care needs include accepting the optimum possible goals in the light of limitations, physical and emotional, using community resources as an aid in resolving problems arising from illness, understanding the role of social problems as influencing factors in the case of illness.
• Theoretical assertions include the nursing problem and nursing treatment typologies, which are the principles of nursing practice and constitute the unique body of knowledge that is nursing.
• Correct identification of the nursing problem influences the nurse's judgment in selecting steps in solving the patient's problem.
• Nursing practice involves skills in developing NCP such as observation of health status, skills of communication, application of knowledge, teaching of patients and families, planning and organization of work, use of resource materials, use of personnel materials, problem-solving, direction of work of others, therapeutic use of the self, and nursing procedure.