Ugh. What verbal diarrhea. This is why I hated some classes with a white hot intensity. You're supposed to stuff things into gibberish. What fun.
I'd note that despite having that tedious definition for health, and having it come first, it is not referred to again in any definition, goal, or step, and so is apparently superfluous to the rest of the theory, and in particular, the nurse's goal.
One "step" is setting a goal, which I thought we had already set with "The nurse's goal is..."
This is probably unfair to Roy, since it's just your brief overview.
Looking at the "diagnosis" list, it includes some immediate observables and other huge inferences. Distinguishing between observables and inferences seems important to me.
Try this gibberish (Roger's Theory of Unitary Human Beings): humans are defined as "indivisible energy fields defined by their patterns" and health is defined as "a manifestation of constant and mutual exchange processes between the energy fields of the person and the environment." Just a moment while my brain melts down trying to translate that into English...
I'm currently writing an essay for one of my classes, 'Theoretical Foundations of Nursing.' I'm about the most 'gong-si' class I've ever taken. (That is a Chinese term for 'shit talking,' which is my boyfriend's favourite term for any field that gets into arguments over definitions, has concepts that don't correspond to any empirical phenomena, is based on ideology, etc.)
The essay involves analyzing a clinical situation (in this case a 55-year-old recently divorced, recently unemployed man, admitted to the psychiatric ward with major depression and suicidal ideation) using a theory (in this case, Roy's Adaptation Model). Done. The next step involves finding criticisms with the model...and despite the fact that I've been complaining about this class and its non-empirical nature all semester, I seem unable to come up with specific criticisms of what this nursing theory is missing.
Which is what I need your help for, because LessWrong is the best community ever when it comes to specific criticisms.
Here is a very brief overview of Roy's Adaptation Theory:
Now my question is, what is a specific criticism I can make of this particular theory in general...not "your definitions aren't specific enough" or "the whole field of nursing theory isn't reductionist enough", but something that this kind of theory should have but doesn't. Any ideas?