2019
Contextual Action Theory in Nursing
Ladislav ValachCorresponding author
Lindenstrasse 26, 3047 Bremgarten, Switzerland
Overview
Nursing theory and the nursing process are complementary foundations of professional nursing practice. Nursing theory is the organized body of knowledge that describes, explains, and guides nursing care, offering conceptual frameworks for understanding the relationships among patients, nurses, health, and environment, and informing how nurses approach their work. The nursing process is a systematic, problem-solving method that translates this knowledge into practice, traditionally comprising assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Together they help nurses gather and interpret patient information, identify needs, set goals, deliver individualized care, and judge whether outcomes have been achieved, supporting consistent, evidence-informed, and patient-centered care. The relationship between theory and process is reciprocal: theories shape how the process is applied, while practice experience refines and tests theory. Within the scope of this journal's focus on Clinical and Practical Nursing, this topic addresses how conceptual models are connected to everyday clinical decision-making and care delivery. Scholarship in the field, including work examining the application of action-oriented theoretical perspectives to nursing, reflects ongoing efforts to ground nursing practice in coherent theory. This page gathers peer-reviewed, open-access research relevant to nursing theory and the nursing process.
Research published in this journal
1 peer-reviewed article, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.