MODELS OF HELP PREFERRED BY NURSES AND MUTUAL AID ORGANIZATIONS (COPING, COMPLIANCE, SELF-HELP GROUPS, NURSING, NON-COMPLIANCE).
Contributors: Boston University.
Published: 1985
Number of pages: 158
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Nurses and self help groups both provide help to persons with long-term health disorders. This study uses a theoretical formulation of attributional models of helping recently developed by Brickman and others to examine the nature of help provided by nurses and self help groups for persons with long-term health disorders. Attribution theory deals with the common sense way in which people perceive and explain the actions of others. The attribution theory of helping looks at helping from the point of view of whether the person needing help is attributed high or low responsibility for causing the problem and whether the person needing help is attributed high or low responsibility for solving the problem. Four models of helping are thus generated: the Moral Model (high causative and high solving responsibility), the Medical Model (low causative and low solving responsibility), the Compensatory Model (low causative but high solving responsibility), and the Enlightenment Model (high causative and low solving responsibility). From these four models various characteristics were developed which were thought to represent the qualities of persons using each model.

In this study the model of help preferred by nurses and the models of help preferred by members of self help groups were examined. Results indicated that all nurses in this study whether practicing in the community or in the hospital preferred the Medical Model of helping for clients with long-term help disorders when no particular health disorder was named. Nurses practicing in hospitals preferred the Enlightenment and Moral Models of help more than did nurses in the community. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous preferred the Enlightenment Model of helping. Members of Better Breathers preferred the Medical Model and the Moral Model and members of the Ostomy Association had no strong preference for any one model. All nurses regardless of where they practiced, preferred the Moral Model of helping for clients with alcoholism, obesity or emphysema and the Compensatory Model of helping for clients with ostomies. When asked about the nature of help received from their groups, members provided responses which were categorized under the four main headings of information, affiliation, abatement of symptoms and self growth. Members of self help groups expected compassion and competence from health professionals during the acute phase of their health disorder and when they were no longer acutely ill they liked the security of knowing the expert was there if needed.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-09, Section: B, page: 3008.

Thesis (D.N.SC.)--BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 1985.

School code: 0017.