Clinical Theory Practice 21st Century Points: 50 Essay

Clinical Theory Practice 21st Century Points: 50 Due: Day 7 Directions: •Reflect type theory (grand, mid-range, situation-specific) applicable clinical nursing practice 21st century. •Include rationale type theory chosen.

Nursing theories are conditioned by practice and research, which clarify and modulate it for the final purpose of building a theoretical framework to guide general clinical practice (Meleis, 2011). The present paper is focused on presenting situation-specific theory as ideal for nursing clinical practice in the 21st century.

Theory developed on the basis of practice bears the name of prescriptive, micro, practice or situation-specific theory (Parker, 2001). By and large, this type of theory is designed to focus on particular nursing situations which emerge during clinical practice, with special focus on certain populations or fields of practice, and is supposed to employ limited scope and focus in elucidating any given situational dilemmas (Meleis, 2010).

Practitioners' daily experience in a clinical onset can be perceived a fundamental source of nursing theory. In fact, it can be stated that the depth and complexity of nursing practice can be fully quantified on the condition that nursing phenomena and co-relative aspects surrounding particular nursing situations are sufficiently described and explained. Furthermore, situation-specific theory is shaped through variations of reflective practice, specifically nurses' active process of quiet reflection on their clinical practice, recalling and noting features of nursing situations, attending to one's own feelings, reevaluating the experience, and integrating newly gained knowledge with prior experience (Gray & Forsstrom, 1991).Grand and middle-ranged theories, due to their universality and generalization prerogatives, can be seen as faulty in providing a better understanding of the diversities pertaining to patients' experiences and responses to a given situation, together with the many ways in which nurses may come to interpret the experience. In addition, grand and middle-ranged theories cannot successfully complement health-care systems by guiding nursing care in the instance of ever-increasing diversity in clients. Moreover, grand theories and middle-range theories by nature disregard sociopolitical, cultural, and historic contexts pertaining to every client-nurse interaction (Im & Meleis, 1999).

By contrast with grand and middle-range theories, situation-specific theories are ideal for the clinical environment because they pose the least abstraction or generalization and they address practical social, historical and cultural issues. In order to illustrate this, the relevant example of Meleis's situation-specific derivation of middle-ranged transition theory is most relevant. Specifically, the matter of menopausal transition of Korean immigrant women was based on a cross-sectional study, researchers' practical knowledge, their previous experience related to this population, and conceptualization. As a result, the concepts thereby included in the transition theory refer to the Korean culture in particular, and the menopausal experience of Korean immigrant women with a low income, while avoiding the transcendence of socially or politically limiting situations (Meleis, 2001).

If further compared with grand theories and middle-range theories, situation-specific theories prove to be more clinically specific, due to their clear focus on the nursing phenomenon,.....