Lenz, Suppe, Gift, Pugh and Milligan (1995, p. 1) inform that, ôOne promising approach to strengthening theory-research and theory-practice linkages is to place greater emphasis on developing and using theories of the middle range to underpin nursing research and practice.ö The authors define middle range theories as moderately abstract, inclusive, organized within a limited scope with a limited number of variables, which are testable in a direct manner. The mid-range theories are said to have a stronger relationship with research and practice.
This paper presents a nursing diagram based on the development of a middle-range nursing theory related to coping with chronic illness. The paper delineates each level of the theory and provides supportive documentation for all statements, postulates, claims, and other notions central to the presented theory.
Phenomena of Interest, Constructs, and Related Concepts
The phenomena of interest associated with the presented middle-range theory is human coping with chronic illness. Thus, the basic constructs are: (1) coping and (2) chronic illness. These constructs can be defined and linked to nursing theory.
According to Ritchie (1999) coping refers to a process whereby people try to manage a discrepancy between the perceived demands of a situation and their available resources. She notes that ôcoping with illnessö is an element of almost all nursing theories and states that as applied in the illness context, coping refers to skills and strategies that help people live with illness situations and/or seek to improve their health, these skills and strategies often being referred to as ôcoping mechanisms.ö
The Corbin and Strauss Chronic Illness Trajectory model (see: Corbin, 1998) is one nursing theory that aims at understanding the nature of chronic illness and how people respond to it. In this regard, Corbin (1998) defines chronic illness as a set of symptoms or disorders th...