Dorothea Orem was a nursing theorist who lived from 1914-2007. She received her Bachelor's and her Masters degrees at Catholic University of America. She worked professionally as a staff nurse, private nurse, nurse educator, nurse consultant and administrator. She published her ideas in the journal, Nursing: Concepts of Practice. In 1976, she received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree.Orem
. worked with several concepts in her creation of the idea of the importance of self-care, for which she is best known. Some of those concepts include:
People are distinct individuals Individuals should be self-reliant as much as possible, or reliant on their family for their care Nursing is an interaction between two or more people An important component of prevention involves meeting self-care needs People are more likely to perform self-care when s/he knows potential health problems and risks Self-care and proper care of family members are learned within a socio-cultural contextShe went on to explain that a nurse, then, may serve as total compensatory support, partial compensatory support or educative/supportive compensatory support. This model details that at different times in someone's life. At times, the nurse may be delivering all of the person's self-care needs because the client is unable to perform these duties him or herself (total compensatory support.) Other time, the nurse and the client share these duties (partial compensatory support.) While other times still, the nurse is there in a training capacity; she shows the client how to take care of his/her own needs and then typically discontinues visits after the client learns the procedures (educative/supportive compensatory support.)In Orem's theory, it is only when someone is at a self-care deficit---when s/he is unable to meet his/her own needs---that the client interacts with the nurse or health care institution.More reference links: http://currentnursing.com/nursing_theory/self_care_deficit_theory.html http://www.slideshare.net/jben501/dorothea-orem-theory 