MN502 Unit 3 grand theory review example

How to Look but Not What to Do: A Review of Martha Rogers's Science of Unitary Human Beings

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Purdue University Global

MN502: Theoretical Foundations of Advanced Practice Nursing

Unit 3 Assignment

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[Date]

The resident described is a composite written for this review. No real person or facility is described.

Placing the Theory

The Science of Unitary Human Beings is a grand theory. It is abstract, broad in scope and concerned with the nature of human beings and their environment as a whole rather than with a particular clinical problem. Fawcett and DeSanto-Madeya (2013) classify it as a conceptual model at the most abstract level of nursing knowledge, from which more specific theories can be derived. That placement matters for this review, because a grand theory should be judged by what it organizes and generates, not by whether it tells a nurse what to do at the bedside.

Exposition: Four Postulates and Three Principles

Rogers built the system on four postulates, set out in her 1970 book and refined in later writing (Rogers, 1970, 1992). Energy fields are the fundamental unit of both the living and the nonliving; a person is an energy field, and so is the environment. Openness means that these fields are continuously open to one another, without boundaries. Pattern is the distinguishing characteristic of an energy field, perceived as a single wave; it cannot be seen directly, only through its manifestations. Pandimensionality describes a nonlinear domain without spatial or temporal attributes, which Rogers used to replace her earlier term, four-dimensionality.

From these postulates Rogers derived three principles of homeodynamics. Resonancy holds that human and environmental field patterns change continuously from lower to higher frequency waves. Helicy holds that the nature of change is continuous, innovative and unpredictable, marked by increasing diversity of pattern. Integrality holds that human and environmental fields are in continuous mutual process. The terms matter because each one says something ordinary words do not: helicy is not simply change but change that is unpredictable and increasingly diverse, and integrality is not interaction between two separate things but one continuous process.

Reach: What the System Generated

The system's strongest evidence of value is the work derived from it. Barrett (2010) developed the theory of power as knowing participation in change, which defines power as the capacity to participate knowingly in the nature of change, with four dimensions: awareness, choices, freedom to act intentionally and involvement in creating change. It narrows Rogers's abstraction into a concept that can be measured, and Barrett developed an instrument to do so. Other derived work includes theories of human field motion and of perceived dissonance, each of which specifies one aspect of pattern that can be studied. Therapeutic touch, developed by Krieger (1979), is often associated with the system because it assumes a human energy field that a practitioner can assess and influence, although its evidence base remains contested and it should not be treated as proof of Rogers's postulates.

Table: derived work and how it narrows the system. Power as knowing participation in change (Barrett): narrows mutual process to a person's capacity to choose and act, measurable with a scale. Human field motion: narrows pattern to perceived movement of the field, measurable by self-report. Therapeutic touch (Krieger): narrows the energy field to a practice of assessment and intervention, with contested evidence.

Application: The Resident at Dusk

A composite 84-year-old woman with moderate Alzheimer disease lives in a memory-care unit. Most afternoons, as daylight fades, she becomes restless: she paces, calls for her late husband and tries to leave through the locked door. Staff describe this as sundowning.

In Rogerian terms, her restlessness is a pattern manifestation, the observable expression of a human field in mutual process with its environmental field. A nurse using the theory would not begin with her diagnosis. She would begin with pattern appraisal: what is changing in the environmental field at dusk? Light falls and shifts from daylight to overhead fluorescent light. Sound changes as the day shift leaves and the evening shift arrives, and the television volume rises. The rhythm of the unit changes as dinner is prepared. The theory directs attention to all of these as part of one continuous process with the resident, not as separate triggers.

That attention is useful. It leads the nurse to notice that the restlessness begins within about 20 minutes of the shift change and the lights switching to overhead mode, and it suggests that a gradual change in lighting and a quieter handoff might alter the pattern.

The unit tried both. For two weeks, the evening staff dimmed the common-area lights gradually from 4 p.m. instead of switching to overhead lighting at once, held the shift handoff in the office rather than the hallway and played music the resident had chosen from her own records. Her pacing episodes fell from most evenings to two in the second week, and she called for her husband less often. The theory helped the staff see those changes as part of one process with her rather than as a list of triggers to remove. It could not tell them which change mattered, or whether the improvement would have occurred anyway, since her pattern was already changing as her disease progressed. That limit leads directly to the omissions below.

Omissions: What the Theory Leaves Out

The same case shows what the theory does not supply. It tells the nurse how to look, but not what to do when the resident's restlessness becomes dangerous, for example when she strikes another resident or falls. It offers no rule for deciding when to intervene physically or pharmacologically, and it does not rank the environmental changes it directs the nurse to notice.

A second omission is testability. The principles of homeodynamics are stated so broadly that almost any observation fits them. Continuous, unpredictable, innovative change is compatible with any change that occurs, which makes the principles difficult to disprove. The derived middle-range theories solve part of this problem by narrowing concepts until they can be measured, but the grand theory itself resists testing. A third, smaller omission is language. Terms such as pandimensionality and energy field are defined within the system but are hard to explain to families or to colleagues outside nursing, which limits how easily the theory can guide shared care across a whole team.

Conclusion

The Science of Unitary Human Beings succeeds as a way of seeing. It gives the nurse a vocabulary for attending to the whole person and environment as one process, and it has generated middle-range theories that can be tested. It fails as a guide to action and as a set of testable propositions. It is best suited to questions about how people experience change and participate in it, and least suited to questions about what a nurse should do next.

References

Barrett, E. A. M. (2010). Power as knowing participation in change. Nursing Science Quarterly, 23(1), 47-54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894318409353797

Fawcett, J., & DeSanto-Madeya, S. (2013). Contemporary nursing knowledge: Analysis and evaluation of nursing models and theories (3rd ed.). F. A. Davis.

Krieger, D. (1979). The therapeutic touch: How to use your hands to help or to heal. Prentice-Hall.

Rogers, M. E. (1970). An introduction to the theoretical basis of nursing. F. A. Davis.

Rogers, M. E. (1992). Nursing science and the space age. Nursing Science Quarterly, 5(1), 27-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/089431849200500108