Theories Guiding Nursing Research and Practice : Making Nursing Knowledge Development Explicit

[This book] has its origins in courses taught by the editors and their collaborators for doctoral students. It therefore addresses the need to focus on how theories can be applied in the real world of clinical practice and the research based on it. Introductory and concluding sections make the case for the importance of theoretical frameworks when developing practice and research settings. Eighteen chapters cover individual theoretical approaches. While some, such as the theory of human caring and transformational leadership theory, will be familiar to many readers in the UK, others cover new territory... SCORE: 4/5 stars." --John Adams , honorary research associate, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery , Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Nursing Standard

This is the first book to clearly and fully demonstrate the process of using theory to guide nursing research and professional practice. It describes a step-by-step format for evaluating nursing theory’s applicability to research, a format that links theory (both middle-range and grand theory) to research on a wide range of clinical populations and care delivery systems. The book describes how theory analysis models are used to examine various nursing phenomena as they relate to nursing research and professional practice, and provides key examples of how this is accomplished.

The book takes the reader through the process of using a theory to guide research from inception of a research question to evaluation of future research. International experts in theory-related nursing research describe twelve theories that have previously been applied to research and practice and six theories that can be applied to future research and practice. Using a consistent analytic framework, each chapter applies a specific theory (from either nursing, psychology, sociology, or management) to a particular clinical population or care delivery issue. These encompass clinical, administrative, and educational nursing settings. The consistent format facilitates ease of comparison across different theories. Generous use of figures and tables further demonstrates the complex relationships between and among concepts embedded in the theories.

Key Features:

• Demonstrates a systematic format for evaluating middle-range and grand nursing theory’s applicability to research
• Links theory to clinical practice at patient population and care delivery levels
• Provides a useful template for students of nursing disciplinary knowledge development
• Presents the scholarship of international researchers of theory-related nursing
• Includes theories from nursing, psychology, sociology, and management

Joyce J. Fitzpatrick, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN, is Elizabeth Brooks Ford Professor of Nursing, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, where she was Dean from 1982 through 1997. She is also Professor, Department of Geriatrics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY. In 1990, Dr. Fitzpatrick received an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Humane Letters, from her alma mater, Georgetown University. In 2011 she received an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Humane Letters, from the Frontier University of Nursing. She has received numerous honors and awards; she was elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing in 1981 and a Fellow in the National Academies of Practice in 1996. She received the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award 18 times. Dr. Fitzpatrick is widely published in nursing and health care literature with over 300 publications. She served as co-editor of the Annual Review of Nursing Research series, vols. 1-26; she edits the journals Applied Nursing Research, Archives in Psychiatric Nursing, and Nursing Education Perspectives, the official journal of the National League for Nursing. She edited three editions of the classic Encyclopedia of Nursing Research (ENR), and a series of nursing research digests

Geraldine McCarthy, PhD, MSN, MEd, RNT, RGN, Fellow RCSI, is emeritus professor at the Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery, University County Cork (UCC), Cork, Ireland, and chair of the South/South West Hospital Group, which comprises nine hospitals in the South of Ireland.