Major assumptions
Orem (2001) identifies five premises underlying the general theory of nursing:
Human beings require continuous, deliberate inputs to themselves and their environments to remain alive and function in accordance with natural human endowments.
2. Human agency, the power to act deliberately, is exercised in the form of care for self and others in identifying needs and making needed inputs.
3. Mature human beings experience privations in the form of limitations for action in care for self and others involving making of life-sustaining and function-regulating inputs.
4. Human agency is exercised in discovering, developing, and transmitting ways and means to identify needs and make inputs to self and others.
5. Groups of human beings with structured relationships cluster tasks and allocate responsibilities for providing care to group members who experience privations for making required, deliberate input to self and others (p. 140)
Theoretical assertions
Presented as a general theory of nursing that represents a complete picture of nursing, the SCDNT is expressed in the following three theories:
Theory of nursing systems
Theory of self-care deficit
Theory of self-care
Theory of nursing systems
The theory of nursing systems proposes that nursing is human action; nursing systems are action systems formed (designed and produced) by nurses through the exercise of their nursing agency for persons with health-derived or health-associated limitations in self-care or dependent-care.
Nursing agency includes concepts of deliberate action, including intentionality, and the operations of diagnosis, prescription, and regulation.