System Model (Betty Neuman)

• Betty Neuman is recognized as a pioneer in the field of nursing, particularly in the area of community mental health.
• Neuman developed her model while lecturing in community mental health at UCLA and first published it in 1972 under the title "A Model for Teaching the Total Person Approach to Patient Problems".
• Betty Neuman was born in 1924 on a farm near Lowell, Ohio.
• In 1947, Neuman earned her nursing diploma from People’s Hospital School of Nursing, Akron, Ohio, and moved to California shortly thereafter.
• Neuman earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from UCLA and also studied psychology and public health.
• Secondary prevention is a type of nursing intervention.
• Stressors are the environment, which can be intrapersonal, interpersonal or external, or created.
• Nursing intervention includes primary prevention, which decreases the possibility of encounter with the stressor, strengthens the flexible line of defense.
• Tertiary prevention is a type of nursing intervention.
• Reconstitution may also come after the treatment for stressor reaction, returning and maintaining system stability, which may be higher or lower than the level of wellness before the invasion of stress.
• Energy depletion or even death can result from stress.
• Lifestyle, coping, client expectation and motivation are inherent in the lines of resistance, protecting the basic structure energy resources.
• In 1966, Neuman earned a master’s degree in mental health and public health consultation, also from UCLA, and then earned her doctorate in clinical psychology in 1985 from Pacific Western University.
• Neuman worked as a hospital staff nurse, a head nurse, and an industrial nurse and consultant before becoming a nursing instructor.
• Neuman has taught medical-surgical nursing, critical care, and communicable disease nursing at the University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles and at other colleges in Ohio and West Virginia.
• Neuman's Systems Model posits that human beings are client or client systems, and that health is a condition in which all parts and subparts are in harmony with the whole of the client.
• Neuman's Systems Model also posits that the environment is the totality of the internal and external forces which surround a person and with which they interact at any given time.
• Basic Structure energy resources are basic survival factors common to human beings; they are the individual’s physical and psychological reserves that contribute to their ability to adapt to stressors and maintain balance.
• Nursing Diagnosis assumes that the nurse collects an adequate database from which to analyze variances from wellness to make the diagnoses.
• Nursing Goals are determined by negotiation with the client for desired prescriptive changes to correct variances from wellness.
• Ineffectiveness of the Line of Resistance can lead to…
• Flexible line of defense is a protective, accordion-like mechanism that surrounds and protects the normal line of defense from invasion by stressors.
• Evaluation is used to confirm that the desired outcomes have been achieved.
• Tertiary prevention manages and reduces the impact of a health condition once it has fully developed.
• Neuman utilized both the inductive and deductive logic in developing her systems model.
• Nursing Outcomes confirmation of prescriptive change or reformulation of nursing goals is evaluated.
• Neuman’s Nursing Process Format includes Nursing Diagnosis, Nursing Goals, Nursing Outcomes, Evaluation, and Concept Definitions.
• Lines of resistance are activated when stressors have penetrated the normal line of defense, causing a reaction symptomatology; they contain certain known and unknown internal and external resources factors that support the client’s basic structure energy resources.
• Secondary prevention aims to detect and treat health conditions in their early stages when they are more easily managed and before they cause severe complications.
• Normal Line of Defense represents what the client has become, the state of which the client has evolved over a period of time or the so-called wellness level.
• Neuman's Systems Model further posits that there are three environments: internal (intrapersonal), external (interpersonal), and created (unconsciously developed used by the client to support coping).
• Neuman's Systems Model also posits that nursing is a unique profession concerned with all the variables affecting clients in their environment, and that nursing actions assist individuals, families and groups to maintain a maximum level of wellness.
• Neuman's Systems Model posits thatnursing involves interventions to reduce the risk factors and promote overall health and well-being in a population that is not yet affected by the condition.