Sister Callista Roy is a nun, professor, and nursing theorist who created and continued developing the adaptation model of nursing. All the theoretical concepts are based on and tied to person-environmental interaction while dealing with life situations and stressors. Roy’s adaptation model (RAM) considers an individual a biopsychosocial creature whose well-being depends on maintaining multidimensional balance and developing coping skills. RAM is a theory that defines goals, explains, and frames nursing practice.
RAM includes a solid conceptual framework: major concepts comprise person, environment, health, and nursing. Humans are seen as adaptive systems, while environment refers to all surroundings, including external and internal stressors-stimuli. Health is considered as a state of becoming whole and integrated. Roy emphasizes that the primary goal of nursing is to help and guide people to live a healthy and happy life, promoting patient adaptation (Clayton State University, 2015). The notion of adaptation is defined as “the ability and tool to cope with the variable internal and environmental conditions” (Mansouri et al., 2019, p.460). RAM implies that adaptation occurs in four particular modes that support integrity: “physiological adaptation, self-concept, role function, and interdependence” (Mansouri et al., 2019, p. 460). The promotion of adaptation in these four modes contributes to enhanced life quality and health by maintaining behaviors that develop adaptive skills and improve interactions with the environment.
RAM is a prominent, well-known, and widely applied nursing theory. Roy considers people learning to cope and adapt as an effective strategy that needs to be used throughout nursing (Clayton State University, 2015). Besides, she defines integrated, compensatory, and compromised life processes as three levels of adaptation. Integrated is an adequate level of adaption that implies structured functioning and wholeness of life processes in meeting individual needs. Nonetheless, achieving that level of adaptation requires patient teaching and promoting coping strategies. The study of Mansouri et al. (2019) reflects on RAM-based training for patients suffering from heart failure and its impact on patients’ quality of life. The authors found that the application of RAM increases disease adaptation and encourages coping with chronic conditions (Mansouri et al., 2019). Statistically significant results depict positive patients’ responses to education based on RAM. The use of this theory promotes patient adaptation and increases compliance, life quality, and, eventually, life expectancy.
References
Clayton State University. (2015). Dr. Eichelberger’s Interview with Sr. Callista Roy [Video]. YouTube.
Mansouri, A., Baraz, S., Elahi, N., Malehi, A. S., & Saberipour, B. (2019). The effect of an educational program based on Roy’s adaptation model on the quality of life of patients suffering from heart failure: A clinical trial study. Japan Journal of Nursing Science, 16(4), 459-467.