Dorothea Orem's Self Care Deficit Theory

Dorothea Orem’s Self-Care deficit theory

Dorothea Orem, who was born in the year 1914, was a nursing theorist who had a vast experience in the nursing field. Self-care deficit nursing theory is a grand nursing theory which was set forth by Dorothea Orem in the year 1959 as part of her study to identify under circumstances which required nursing care (Orem, 2001). Orem published her first book in the year 1971 named Nursing : Concepts in practice and continued to release improved editions till 2001.
In Dorothea Orem’s metaparadigm of nursing, a person is referred to as the care recipient as well as the caregiver. A person is viewed as a wholesome being, capable of self-care with universal, developmental and self-deviation (Masters, 2015).

The theory of self-care explains the term self-care and the factors that affects the ability to do so (George, 2014).Self-care is defined as an individual’s act of intentional practice and deliverance of actions out of one’s own initiative to maintain one’s own life, health and well-being (Alligood, 2014). It has also been described by Hartweg (1991) to be a behaviour learned through interactions and communications. A person who engages in self-care is termed as a self-care agent (Parker, 2005) and the gained ability to do so effectively is termed as self-care agency (George, 2014) which has been further elaborated to be conditioned by factors such as age, gender, developmental state, health state, sociocultural orientations, healthcare system factors, family system factors, patterns of living, environmental factors and resource adequacy and availability (Orems, 2001, pg 328). Taylor and Renpenning (2011) describes self-care requisites as actions that are necessary for regulating an aspect of human functioning which are divided into universal, developmental and health deviation requisites. Universal self-care requisites are activities of daily of living standardized among human beings (Hartweg, 1991). Orems (2001) regards developmental requisites as needs that arise during the different life stages such as changes in physical

It is applicable to all individuals who are unable to meet their self-care needs effectively and require nursing care (George, 2014). The applicability of Orem’s theory’s in various disciplines has been tested and illustrated in journals such as effect of Orem self-care program on the life quality on burn patients by Hashemi et al (2014) and application of Dorothea Orem's theory of Self-Care to the elderly patient on peritoneal dialysis by O'Shaughnessy (2014). The Orem’s theory directs nursing interventions that yields favourable and positive outcomes for the patients. The different nursing systems allow patients to be assessed and necessary interventions to be applied, allowing the individual’s health to be restored to meet the