Faye Glenn Abdellah

 Introduced “PATIENT-CENTERED APPROACHES TO NURSING MODEL”.

 Identified TWENTY ONE (21) NURSING PROBLEMS in which determine nursing care.
 Defined NURSING as service to individuals and families; therefore to society.
 Conceptualized nursing as an art and a science that molds the attitudes, intellectual
competencies and technical skills of the individual nurse into the desire and ability to
people, sick or well, and cope with their health needs.
 Abdellah and colleagues developed a list of 21 nursing problems. They also identified 10
steps to identify the client’s problems and 11 Nursing skills to be used in developing a
treatment typology.
 10 steps to identify the client’s problem.
 Learn to know the patient.
 Sort out relevant and significant data.
 Make generalizations about available data in relation to similar nursing problems
presented by other patients.
 Identify the therapeutic plan.
 Test generalizations with the patient and make other generalizations.
 Validate the patient’s conclusions about his nursing problems.
 Continue to observe and evaluate the patient over a period of time to identify any
attitudes and clues affecting his behavior.
 Explore the patient’s and family reactions to the therapeutic plan and involve them in
the plan.
 Identify how the nurse feels about the patient’s nursing problems.
 Discuss and develop a comprehensive nursing care plan.
11 NURSING SKILLS

 Observation of health status

 Skills of communication
 Application of knowledge
 Teaching of patient’s family
 Planning and organization of work
 Use of resource materials
 Use of personnel resources
 Problem-solving
 Direction of work of others
 Therapeutic use of the self
 Nursing Procedures

THE TWENTY-ONE NURSING PROBLEMS

 Three Major Categories:

 Physical sociological and emotional needs of the clients
 Types of interpersonal relationships between the nurse and patient
 Common elements of client care
CONCEPTS

 Purpose: To deliver nursing care for the whole individual

A. Person
Abdellah describes people as having physical, emotional and sociological needs. These
needs may be overt, consisting of largely physical needs or covert such as emotional
and social needs.
Patient is prescribed as the only justification for the existence of nursing
Individuals (and families) are the recipients of nursing
Health or achieving of it, is the purpose of nursing services

B. Society and Environment

Society is included in “planning for optimum health on local state, national, and
international levels”. However, as Abdellah further delineated her ideas, the focus
of nursing service is clearly the individual.

C. Health:
In Patient-Centered Approaches to Nursing, Abdellah describes health as state
mutually exclusive for illness.
Although, Abdellah does not give a definition of health, she speaks to “total health
needs” and
“A healthy state of mind and body” in her description of nursing as a comprehensive
service.
D. Nursing
Nursing is a helping profession. In Abdullah’s Model, nursing care is doing something
to or for the person providing information to the person with the goals of meeting
needs, increasing or restoring self-help ability, or alleviating impairment
She considers nursing to be comprehensive that is served that is based on art and
science and aims to help people, sick or well, cope with their health needs.