Jacobs, & Huether, p. 190).
Orem's self-care model is an interactionist model, which implies that the whole is greater than its parts. The model provides a framework for the education and support of patients in the development of effective self-care behavior (Feathers, 1994, pp. 369-376). Self-care is defined as the practice of activities by individuals which they personally initiate and perform in their own behalf in maintaining their own life, health, and well-being.
The self-care model is structured around six central concepts and one peripheral concept. The six central concepts are (1) self-care, (2) self-care agency, (3) therapeutic self-care demand, (4) self-care agency, (5) nursing agency, and (6) nursing system, while the peripheral concept is a set of basic conditioning factors. The Orem self-care model of nursing is implemented within the "nursing metaparadigm concepts of person, environment, health, and nursing" (Fawcett, 1993, p. 216).
King's theory of nursing conceives the "patient as a personal system within the environment who coexists with other personal systems" (Chinn, Jacobs, & Huether, p. 191). Individual persons, as personal systems, "form groups that comprise interpersonal systems, and interpersonal systems contribute to social systems. Thus patient and nurse are comprised of personal systems as subsystems with interpersonal and social systems" (p. 191). King's system posits that, as "interaction occurs within social systems, nurses require knowledge of concepts of organization, power, authority, status, decision making, and roles in order to function adequately" (p. 191).
In King's theory of nursing, the "focus . . . is the human being in the system context. The goal is to help people in groups attain, maintain, and restore health or die with dignity. Interactions of the individual with the environment are significant in influencing life and health" (Chinn, Jacobs, & Huether, p. 191). The p...