REACTIVE-ADAPTATION PROCESS: AN INTEGRATED THEORY OF NURSING BEHAVIORS.
Contributors: University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Published: 1986
Number of pages: 138
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This field study investigated the influence of professional self-image of registered nurses on nursing behaviors. Its purpose was to identify and compare the professional self-image of female registered nurses with the image of nursing advanced by the profession.

The research approach used was that of grounded theory. Research strategies included 120 hours of participant observations; in-depth interviews; administration of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and the Tennessee Self Concept Scale to 15 female registered nurses employed at staff level positions in three hospitals in northern Louisiana. The sample represented a wide experiential background and a diversity of ages and areas of practice.

Reactive-Adaptation Process was the analytic scheme generated from this study as an integrated theory used by nurses to fulfill their perceived role expectations within an ambiguous Health Care System. In this Process the responses of acting and reacting are adaptive behaviors which lead to goal attainment of making a difference or staying afloat.

Nurses were able to make a difference by using enablers and winning strategies in spite of recognized barriers. Enablers were identified as knowledge/experience, commitment, and trust/respect while winning strategies included use of self, role modeling, patient advocacy and nurse/physician interactions. Burnout, fatigue, and stress emerged as barriers to making a difference. Survival strategies of making do, avoiding confrontation, and not making a decision were identified as nursing behaviors which allow nurses to stay afloat when reacting to an ambiguous System.

Conclusions reached were: (1) the perceived role expectations of staff nurses serve as the stimulus for nursing behaviors. (2) staff nurses' role expectations are congruent with those advanced by the profession, and (3) the staff nurses' perceived role expectations of the System mean responsibility without authority.

Teaching of adaptation behaviors for staff nurses and nursing students through staff development and curricula in lieu of emphasis on assertiveness training is implied from the findings. Recommendations include further theory development based on the substantive theory generated in this study. Also, it is recommended that a study of male staff nurses be done to determine the degree to which males may be capable of adaptation.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-01, Section: B, page: 0091.

Thesis (D.S.N.)--UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM, 1986.

School code: 0005.