Depending on your field choice, discuss one nursing theory and identify the effect the implications of this theory could have on nursing administration, management, or education.

There have been great nursing theorists and nursing theories throughout history, and all of them, have played a major role in developing the profession. However, there is one in particular that had a very big impact, as it led the nursing profession to view patients, not as simple organisms with an ailment that needed to be treated, and where nurses played a very small part, but rather, transformed the vision into a whole, something much bigger, and suddenly, the role of the nurse jumped into the forefront. This theory, is Callista Roy´s Adaptation Model.

The Adaptation Model of Roy, takes a human being, or a group of beings, as a system of adaptation, a whole that is influenced by several factors, and his/her, or their, response to a stimuli, which affects the whole, creates a response from all the factors within the person, or group. In some cases, the responses are adaptative, but in others, the balance is damaged. Roy was one of the first nursing theorists to realize that the human being was composed of interconnected factors: physical-physiological, the self-concept, the role function and the interdependence. She also saw that all systems receive stimulus, and these stimuli will activate one, two, or several of the modes. This generates a response. And because people are always looking to adapt to their environment, they will produce responses to achieve this goal. However, these responses may sometimes be inefficient, inadequate, or simply wrong.

In all aspects of nursing, this theory plays a role because it leads the nurse to realize her own job is not simply to deal with a physical-physiological aspect of care; she is also in charge of organizing the resources and tools that will be needed to reinforce, ensure, or correct, adaptive, or maladaptive, behaviors in patients and their social groups. It also leads students to understand patients in a different way, and see that the work of a nurse is vital to re-establish balance in an adaptive system through nursing care plans and programs that seek to return balance to not just one, but all the interconnected modes.