(1973) provides nurses with the opportunity
to enhance their understanding of it and to
provide interventions for communities that
suffer from environmental disasters. An as-
sessment of the internal environment’s re-
sponse to the challenge of the external
environment (e.g., destruction from hurri-
canes) will immediately identify the altered
health status of the community and the com-
munity needs. An assessment of the external
environment will provide an understanding
of the changes occurring due to the assault
on the internal environment and a more
detailed assessment of the perceptive, organ-
ismic, and conceptual levels of the environ-
mental challenges. There is no question that
this approach to describing, defining, and
planning for environmental challenges will
identify (1) the perceptual challenges, (2) the
organismic challenges that may not be imme-
diately known to the residents (e.g., pollution
of air and water), and (3) the conceptual is-
sues that increase the nurses’ awareness of
the social, political, and economic impact
on the predicament. This provides the nurses
with the opportunity to develop a political
agenda and perhaps design public policy
that might improve interventions in the con-
text of a disaster. The Conservation Model
has the components needed to provide
nurses with a global perspective of the envi-
ronment.
The practice of nurses and advanced
practice nurses is changing rapidly to keep up
with the current speed of health-care system
changes. Levine’s Conservation Model pro-
vides an approach that educates good nurses
and provides a foundation for their practice,
whatever the role or the setting. Nurse prac-
titioners, case managers, program planners,
nurse midwives, nurse anesthetists, and nurse
entrepreneurs are encouraged to test the
model as a basis for improving and guiding
their practice. Whatever the results, they
should publish them to assure the continued
development of the art and science of nurs-
ing. Levine will applaud their efforts.Theory is the poetry of science. The poet’s
words are familiar, each standing alone, butbrought together they sing, they astonish, they
teach. The theorist offers a fresh vision, famil-
iar concepts brought together in bold, new de-
signs....The theorist and poet seek excitement
in the sudden insights that make ordinary ex-
perience extraordinary, but theory caught in
the intellectual exercises of the academy be-
comes alive only when it is made a true instru-
ment of persuasion. (Levine, 1995, p. 14)References
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