Nursing theories

Mrs. X
56 years
Female
No formal education
House hold
Married
Hindu
Rheumatoid arthritis
Orem’s theory of self care deficit.

OREM’S THEORY OF SELF CARE DEFICIT

• The self care deficit theory proposed by Orem is a combination of three theories, i.e. theory of self care, theory of self care deficit and the theory of nursing systems.
• In the theory of self care, she explains self care as the activities carried out by the individual to maintain their own health.
• The self care agency is the acquired ability to perform the self care and this will be affected by the basic conditioning factors such as age, gender, health care system, family system etc.
• Therapeutic self-care demand is the totality of the self care measures required.
• The self care is carried out to fulfill the self-care requisites.
• There are mainly 3 types of self care requisites such as universal, developmental and health deviation self care requisites.
• Whenever there is an inadequacy of any of these self care requisite, the person will be in need of self care or will have a deficit in self care.
• The deficit is identified by the nurse through the thorough assessment of the patient.
• Once the need is identified, the nurse has to select required nursing systems to provide care: wholly compensatory, partly compensatory or supportive and educative system.
• The care will be provided according to the degree of deficit the patient is presenting with.
• Once the care is provided, the nursing activities and the use of the nursing systems are to be evaluated to get an idea about whether the mutually planned goals are met or not.
• Thus the theory could be successfully applied into the nursing practice.
• For Mrs. X….
• She came to the hospital with complaints of pain over all the joints, stiffness which is more in the morning and reduces by the activities.
• She has these complaints since 5 years and has taken treatment from local hospital.
• The symptoms were not reducing and came to --MC, Hospital for further management.
• Patient was able to do the ADL by herself but the way she performed and the posture she used was making her prone to develop the complications of the disease.
• She also was malnourished and was not having awareness about the deficiencies and effects.