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Martha Elizabeth rogers

(1914-1994)

Born in Dallas, Texas, on May 12, 1914.

Rogers was the eldest f four children of Bruce and
Lucy.
She found Kindergarten to be terribly exciting
and had a love and passion for books that was
fostered by her parents.
She was well acquainted with the public library
and started reading eight books at a time.
Rogers already knew the Greek alphabet by age
10. By the sixth grade, she already finished
reading all 20 volumes of The Childs Book of
Knowledge and was into the Encyclopedia
Britannica.

Martharogers

Attended the University of Tennessee at

Knoxville from 1931 to 1933, Rogers entered the
Knoxville General Hospital School of Nursing,
receiving her diploma in 1936, and earned a
bachelor of science degree from George Peabody
College, Nashville, in 1937.
She was employed as a public health nurse in
Michigan from 1937 to 1939, and as a member of
the staff of the Hartford, Connecticut Visiting
Nurses Association from 1940 to 1945.

Martharogers

After receiving a master of arts degree from

Teachers College, Columbia University, in
1945, she accepted the position of executive
director of the Phoenix Visiting Nurse
Association in Arizona, where she remained
for six years.
In 1952, she received a master's degree in
public health and in 1954, a doctor of science
degree, both from Johns Hopkins
University.

Martharogers

In 1954, Rogers was appointed professor

of nursing and head of the Division of
Nursing at New York University.
Rogers was honored with numerous
awards and citations for her sustained
contributions to nursing and science. In
1996, she was posthumously inducted
into the American Nurses Associations
Hall of Fame.

Martharogers

Rogers died on March 13, 1994 and was

buried in Knoxville, Tennessee. She has
a memorial placed in the sidewalk near
her childhood home in Knoxville.

Martharogers

According to Rogers, the Science of

Unitary Human Beings contains two
dimensions: the science of nursing,
which is the knowledge specific to the
field of nursing that comes from
scientific research; and the art of
nursing, which involves using the
science of nursing creatively to help
better the life of the patient.

Philosophical
underpinnings of the
study

(1) Man is a unified whole possessing his own

integrity and manifesting characteristics that are
more than and different from the sum of his
parts. (2) Man and environment are continuously
exchanging matter and energy with one another.
(3) The life process evolves irreversibly and
unidirectionally along the space-time continuum.
(4) Pattern and organization identify man and
reflect his innovative wholeness. And lastly, (5)
Man is characterized by the capacity for
abstraction and imagery, language and thought,
sensation and emotion.

Assumptions

Health
Rogers defines health as an
expression of the life process. It is
the characteristics and behavior
coming from the mutual,
simultaneous interaction of the
human and environmental fields,
and health and illness are part of
the same continuum.

Major Concepts

Nursing
It is the study of unitary,
irreducible, indivisible human
and environmental fields: people
and their world.

Major Concepts

Scope of Nursing
Nursing aims to assist people in
achieving their maximum health
potential. Maintenance and
promotion of health, prevention of
disease, nursing diagnosis,
intervention, and rehabilitation
encompass the scope of nursings
goals.

Major Concepts

Environmental Field
An irreducible, indivisible,
pandimensional energy field
identified by pattern and integral
with the human field.

Major Concepts

Energy Field
The energy field is the
fundamental unit of both the
living and the non-living. It
provides a way to view people and
the environment as irreducible
wholes. The energy fields
continuously vary in intensity,
density, and extent.

Major Concepts

Openness
There are no boundaries that stop
energy flow between the human
and environmental fields, which is
the openness in Rogers theory.

Subconcepts

Pandimensional
Pan-dimensionality is defined as
non-linear domain without
spatial or temporal attributes.

Subconcepts

Pattern
Rogers defined pattern as the
distinguishing characteristic of an
energy field seen as a single wave.
It is an abstraction, and gives
identity to the field.

Subconcepts

Principles of Homeodynamics
Homeodynamics should be
understood as a dynamic version
of homeostasis (a relatively steady
state of internal operation in the
living system).

Subconcepts

Principle of Reciprocy
Postulates the inseparability of
man and environment and
predicts that sequential changes in
life process are continuous,
probabilistic revisions occurring
out of the interactions between
man and environment.

Subconcepts

Principle of Synchrony
This principle predicts that
change in human behavior will be
determined by the simultaneous
interaction of the actual state of
the human field and the actual
state of the environmental field at
any given point in space-time.

Subconcepts

Principle of Integrality (Synchrony +

Reciprocy)
Because of the inseparability of
human beings and their
environment, sequential changes in
the life processes are continuous
revisions occurring from the
interactions between human beings
and their environment.

Subconcepts

Principle of Resonancy
It speaks to the nature of the change
occurring between human and
environmental fields. The life
process in human beings is a
symphony of rhythmical vibrations
oscillating at various frequencies

Subconcepts

Principle of Helicy
The human-environment field is a
dynamic, open system in which
change is continuous due to the
constant interchange between the
human and environment.

Subconcepts

The nursing process has three

steps in Rogers Theory of Unitary
Human Beings: assessment,
voluntary mutual patterning, and
evaluation.

Science of Unitary Human

Beings and Nursing Process

Areas of assessment are:

the total pattern of events at any given
point in space-time, simultaneous states
of the patient and his or her
environment, rhythms of the life process,
supplementary data, categorical disease
entities, subsystem pathology, and
pattern appraisal.

Science of Unitary Human

Beings and Nursing Process

Mutual patterning of the human and environmental fields

includes:
sharing knowledge
offering choices
empowering the patient
fostering patterning
evaluation
repeat pattern appraisal, which includes nutrition,
work/leisure activities, wake/sleep cycles, relationships,
pain, and fear/hopes
identify dissonance and harmony
validate appraisal with the patient
self-reflection for the patient

Science of Unitary Human

Beings and Nursing Process

Rogers concepts provide a

worldview from which nurses may
derive theories and hypotheses and
propose relationships specific to
different situations.
Rogers theory is not directly
testable due to lack of concrete
hypotheses, but it is testable in
principle.

Strengths

Rogers model does not define particular

hypotheses or theories for it is an abstract,
unified, and highly derived framework.
Testing the concepts validity is
questionable because its concepts are not
directly measurable.
The theory was believed to be profound,
and was too ambitious because the concepts
are extremely abstract.

Weakness

Rogers claimed that nursing exists

to serve people, however, nurses
roles were not clearly defined.
The purpose of nurses is to
promote health and well-being for
all persons wherever they are.
However, Rogers model has no
concrete definition of health state.

Weakness