NURSING THEORIST JOYCE TRAVELBEE

Nursing Theorist Joyce Travelbee



Nursing Theorist Joyce Travelbee

Biography of Joyce Travelbee

Joyce Travelbee (1926-1973) was an American nurse who in 1960 dealt with the interpersonal aspects of nursing. She had based on psychiatric nursing. Travelbee's theory anticipated a showdown with the positivist view of human nature. She believed that the patients were largely become objects of care and so was not seen as human beings. Her main aspiration was the Danish existentialist Soren Kiekegaard and the German psychologist Viktor Frankl.

Educational Background & Career

Joyce Travelbee (1926-1973), was a psychiatric nurse, educator and a writer. In 1956, she graduated from Louisiana State University with her BSN degree. In 1959, she earned her Master's of Science Degree from Yale University. In 1963 she started to issue articles and journals in nursing. In 1966 she issued her 1st book titled Interpersonal Aspects of Nursing followed by a continuation of that book published in 1971. Her next book Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing: Process in the One-to-One Relationship, was published in 1969. In the year 1973 she began her Doctoral program in Florida, which she would not live to finish. In the summer of 1973, at the age of 47 Joyce Travelbee died after a brief sickness. She was continually developing new methods and was far ahead of her time in the development of these concepts. Joyce Travelbee believes that nursing requires a holistic approach that considers all factors affecting a client's health—physical, physiological, psychological, mental, social, cultural, developmental and spiritual well-being.

Joyce Travelbee's Theory

Travelbee's theory based on existential humanity means that humans are constantly faced choices and conflicts and is accountable to the choices we make in life. This means that humans are constantly faced choices and conflicts and is accountable to the choices we make in life. Everyone is in her eyes rational, but can in special situations to act irrationally, and we all have the ability to change and develop. We must relate to all people as unique individuals, because all people are unique and irreplaceable, and different from all who lived and who will come to life. The sick must be primarily seen as a man who comes to us for help because they experience a problem or a crisis and we need most of all look at the patient's experience of his illness. Travelbee do not use the word "patient "in her book because she believes that there are patients, but only "Individual people in need of care and support from other people who are likely to provide the necessary help." (Travelbee, J, 1963)

Travelbee's experience in primary psych nursing perform at a Catholic benevolent society clinic directed her to accept as true that the care given in these kind of organizations needed compassion. She sensed nursing required a "humanistic transformation" and a renewed focus on nurturing as central to nursing--she alerted that if this didn't happen, consumers might seek a "new and different kind of wellbeing care worker." Travelbee's concepts have substantially influenced the hospice ...