Contributor – Jacqueline Fawcett
January 19, 2024
Author – Martha Raile Alligood
Year first published - 2002
Major Concepts
Empathy
Respect
Responsibility
Typology
Middle-range theory
Brief Description
This theory of “the art of nursing discovered in Rogers’ science is a study of the values inherent in the science” (Alligood, 2002, p.57). One concept of the theory is respect (a noun and a verb), which “emerges from an understanding of the acausal process of people and their environments . . . [and] is rooted in human freedom and individual rights” (Alligood, 2002, pp. 57-58). Another concept is responsibility, which “emerges from Rogers’ descriptions of how persons and their environments present unitary human developmental phenomena for nursing’s concern and betterment of society. . . [Responsibility] is rooted in the value of human concern for the welfare of others” (Alligood, 2002, p. 58). Still another concept is empathy, which “is defined as a feeling attribute of the continuous person-environment process . . . Thus, the art of professional nursing becomes the ability to balance respect of human freedom and individual rights with responsibility for the welfare of others through knowing from the feeling attribute of empathy in the moral action that is nursing practice” (Alligood, 2002, p. 58).
Primary Source
Alligood, M. R. (2002). A theory of the art of nursing discovered in Rogers’ science of unitary human beings. International Journal for Human Caring, 6(2), 55–60. doi: 10.20467/1091-5710.6.2.55
About the Author
Dr. Alligood has retired from her position as Professor, College of Nursing, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC. She is co-editor and then editor of several editions of Nursing Theorists and Their Work, and the founding editor, then co-editor, and then sole editor of Nursing Theory: Utilization and Application. Dr. Alligood also is the interviewer for Volumes 2 and 3 of the The Nurse Theorist: Portraits of Excellence series of DVDs produced by the Fuld Institute of Technology for Nursing Education (FITNE).