Nursing models in special hospital settings.
The use of theories and models in nursing is not merely an armchair activity indulged in by academic nurses in teaching and research institutions, but a means of looking critically at practice to improve the effectiveness of care. Nursing models help to provide descriptions of the contents of teaching and training courses. Models aim to specify: goals of action; descriptive terms for the recipients of services; nurse roles; likely sources of difficulty; the focus for intervention; and the intended consequences of the nursing model in applied practice. Examination reveals three separate dominant models of nursing practice in special hospitals: medico-legal, moral-retributional and educational. Nursing models are both useful and necessary for the provision of coherent teaching curricula and as a framework for the actual process of nursing. The need for consideration of model selection and model choice seems paramount in the current climate of special hospital nursing. A major advantage of educational nursing models seems that they allow the development and growth of nurses, with likely benefits for improved consumer services.
D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D006782:Hospitals, Special; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009736:Nursing Process; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D006113:United Kingdom