Who are the early nursing theorists and what were their contributions?
• Virginia Henderson defined nursing as assisting the individual to gain health or to be allowed a peaceful death. Along with Bertha Harmer, she wrote a fundamentals of nursing text that described 14 human needs addressed by nurses. • Faye Abdellah expanded Henderson’s 14 human needs into 21 nursing problems. • Hildegard Peplau, a psychiatric nurse instructor, described the nurse-client relationship. • Joyce Travelbee focused on the interpersonal relationship between the client and the nurse. • Paterson and Zderad also emphasized the humanistic and existential bases of nursing.
