Middle Range Theory In Nursing

The Nurse workforce comprises of the licence nurses such as registered nurses (RN), licensed vocational nurses (LVN), licensed practical nurses (LPN) and the nursing aides. Registered nurses are responsible for the assessments of patient’s needs, developments of care plans, medication administrations and treatments, while licence vocational nurses perform specific care under the delegation and supervision of the registered nurse. Nursing aides perform mostly unskilled cares such as activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, transfers, and grooming) etc. The nurse-patient ratio depends on the acuity of a unit and the type of patients in the unit. High acuity should attract lower ratio while low acuity of the unit high ratio, sometimes it does follow this because of lack of registered nurses. Lower nursing staffing ratio has adverse effects on the patients and nurses as well.
American Nurses Association (ANA) reported that, “massive reduction in nursing budgets, joined with the challenges presented by a growing nursing shortage have resulted in fewer nurses working longer hours and caring for sicker patients.” These situations endanger care and leads to nursing shortage resulting to an environment that derives nurses from the
McEwen & Wills 2014 P.214. The middle range theories are more direct and have less concepts. Middle range theories are useful in research than the grand theories. These are because they have low levels of abstracts and can easily fit in operational use. They support the predictions of study and help to develop interventions for health problems. Middle Range theories were used previously to review literatures, qualitative research, field studies, conceptual models, taxonomies of nursing diagnoses and interventions, clinical practice guidelines, theories from other disciplines and statistical analysis of empirical data. McEwen & wills 2014