CHAPTER

12

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Dorothea E. Orem

PART ONE: Dorothea

E. Orem’s Self-Care

Deficit Nursing Theory

Introducing the Theorist

Views of Human Beings Specific to Nursing

Summary

References

She argues that nursing is distinguished from other

human services and other forms of care by the way

in which it focuses on human beings. In the 1950s,

she had the foresight to recognize the need to iden-

tify the proper focus of nursing and to clarify the

domain and boundaries of nursing as a field of

practice in order to enhance nursing’s disciplinary

evolution. She began her work by seeking an an-

swer to the question of what conditions exist in

people when judgments are made about their need

for nursing care. She concluded that the human

condition associated with the need for nursing is

the existence of a health-related limitation in the

ability of persons to provide for self the amount

Introducing the Theorist

Dorothea E. Orem is described as a pioneer in the
development of distinctive nursing knowledge
(Fawcett, 2000, p. 224). Orem contends that the
term “care” describes nursing in a most general way,
but does not describe nursing in a way that distin-
guishes it from other forms of care (Orem, 1985).

Nursing is distinguished from other human

services and other forms of care by the

way in which it focuses on human beings.

Dorothea E. Orem