Abstract
Nursing diagnoses are concepts which constitutes buildingblocks in theory development in nursing. Different authors differentiates between levels of theory development for a practice disipline. Practice disiplines has an action imperative which calls for consciousness of special purposes, understanding of phenomena of concern and ability to help by controlling patients problems. Theories for practice disiplines are goaloriented theories. On the abstract level phenomena of concers can be differentiated into problematic, resource, behavioral process and goal concepts.
A theorical definition of the problematic nursing concepts (the nursing diagnoses) is necessary to be able to differentiate between nursing diagnoses and other conceptualizations of health deviation. The problematic nursing concepts can be defined as a health deviation precipitated by resource and/or behavioral process deficiency.
The resource and process concepts are variables which can classify the problematic nursing consepts. This classification system constitutes the lovest descriptive level in theory development. The problematic nursing concepts constitute the lowest level in the classification system. The operationalization of those concepts constitutes an operationalization of concepts in the theory.
Variations in health are associated with variations in the resource and process variables. Therefore it is necessary to have a description and an explanation of positive health prior to attemting to describe and explain health deviations. Health is the explanandum and the first level of theory development is the explicands in explanatory nursing theories. From this perspective nursing diagnpses has to be developed in connection with development of nursing theory on different levels.
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