I seem unable to come up with specific criticisms of what this nursing theory is missing
Can you go over the exercises suggested in comments on the “Be specific” post, and see if any of them sounds likely to help, or even merely dislodges new ideas for you?
For instance, along the lines of “Filing a bug report”, could you try writing a letter to the Department of Theories Department at Knol-Mart, starting with the line “Dear Sirs, I am hereby returning to you my shipment of Roy’s Adaptation Theory (nearly unused) which I found defective in the following ways. First, when I tried turning the Health knob on this Theory...”
For a more specific exercise, try locating the opposites of the definitions given. For instance, given a definition for “health”, you should be able to invert the terms to get a definition for “illness”.
For another, try comparing the theory with some other model—for instance the “naive” model of whatever-it-is that you would have used if you hadn’t ever been exposed to the Roy thing, your “intuition” of these things—does the latter give you some specific conclusions, predictions and angles of attack? If so it’s doing at least one thing better. Find out why.
For a third, try listing some things that you absolutely wouldn’t expect a sane Theory to lead you to do (say, tell the poor guy to “stop whining and get a job”), and based on the general idea that theories should add up to normality, ask how Roy’s Adaptation Theory specifically prohibits you from doing them. (If it doesn’t, that’s where it’s broken.)
For a third, try listing some things that you absolutely wouldn’t expect a sane Theory to lead you to do (say, tell the poor guy to “stop whining and get a job”), and based on the general idea that theories should add up to normality, ask how Roy’s Adaptation Theory specifically prohibits you from doing them. (If it doesn’t, that’s where it’s broken.)
This is the second thing that jumped out at me when reading the components of Roy’s Adaptation Theory (the first being that the “definitions” completely fail to circumscribe the actual concepts they attempt to define.) Adaptation to an environment does not correspond to our naive notions of good patient treatment, in situations such as a prisoner in a maximum security detention facility, whose growth into a violent top dog who makes the other prisoners his bitches a good Adaptation Theory nurse would be obliged to assist.
It’s a common naive view of evolution that it consistently makes organisms better and more advanced according to human notions of advancement (and perhaps this misconception is at the root of Adaptation Theory, if it takes adaptation to one’s environment as its mandate.) But according to ordinary human values, environments can impose perverse pressures , so that the results of adapting to them can be quite horrible. If the most face-value interpretation of Adaptation Theory tells you that it’s better for a patient growing up in a violent slum to become a high-powered drug dealer who occasionally has people shot and has women all over the slum raising children who don’t know their father than for him to get some sort of job or education which gets him out of there, it’s probably not a very good theory.
If we can’t take Adaptation Theory at face value, but instead have to twist it around so as to interpret it as telling us to do what already seems like common sense, then it’s definitely not a very good theory.
For a more specific exercise, try locating the opposites of the definitions given. For instance, given a definition for “health”, you should be able to invert the terms to get a definition for “illness”.
This sounds like the easiest and most fruitful of the exercises you offered. I don’t really have a ‘naive model’–I’ve never trusted my intuitions particularly, and they’re mostly silent on nursing-related stuff, probably because as of yet I have hardly any clinical experience.
For a third, try listing some things that you absolutely wouldn’t expect a sane Theory to lead you to do (say, tell the poor guy to “stop whining and get a job”), and based on the general idea that theories should add up to normality, ask how Roy’s Adaptation Theory specifically prohibits you from doing them. (If it doesn’t, that’s where it’s broken.)
Sounds very useful, but also exhausting on the brain. I’ll see how brain-exhausted I am after studying for my upcoming exams, and how many pages I can get out of the other suggestions. (I may not be genuinely curious enough about this to keep working on it after the essay is handed in.) Thanks, though!
Can you go over the exercises suggested in comments on the “Be specific” post, and see if any of them sounds likely to help, or even merely dislodges new ideas for you?
For instance, along the lines of “Filing a bug report”, could you try writing a letter to the Department of Theories Department at Knol-Mart, starting with the line “Dear Sirs, I am hereby returning to you my shipment of Roy’s Adaptation Theory (nearly unused) which I found defective in the following ways. First, when I tried turning the Health knob on this Theory...”
For a more specific exercise, try locating the opposites of the definitions given. For instance, given a definition for “health”, you should be able to invert the terms to get a definition for “illness”.
For another, try comparing the theory with some other model—for instance the “naive” model of whatever-it-is that you would have used if you hadn’t ever been exposed to the Roy thing, your “intuition” of these things—does the latter give you some specific conclusions, predictions and angles of attack? If so it’s doing at least one thing better. Find out why.
For a third, try listing some things that you absolutely wouldn’t expect a sane Theory to lead you to do (say, tell the poor guy to “stop whining and get a job”), and based on the general idea that theories should add up to normality, ask how Roy’s Adaptation Theory specifically prohibits you from doing them. (If it doesn’t, that’s where it’s broken.)
This is the second thing that jumped out at me when reading the components of Roy’s Adaptation Theory (the first being that the “definitions” completely fail to circumscribe the actual concepts they attempt to define.) Adaptation to an environment does not correspond to our naive notions of good patient treatment, in situations such as a prisoner in a maximum security detention facility, whose growth into a violent top dog who makes the other prisoners his bitches a good Adaptation Theory nurse would be obliged to assist.
It’s a common naive view of evolution that it consistently makes organisms better and more advanced according to human notions of advancement (and perhaps this misconception is at the root of Adaptation Theory, if it takes adaptation to one’s environment as its mandate.) But according to ordinary human values, environments can impose perverse pressures , so that the results of adapting to them can be quite horrible. If the most face-value interpretation of Adaptation Theory tells you that it’s better for a patient growing up in a violent slum to become a high-powered drug dealer who occasionally has people shot and has women all over the slum raising children who don’t know their father than for him to get some sort of job or education which gets him out of there, it’s probably not a very good theory.
If we can’t take Adaptation Theory at face value, but instead have to twist it around so as to interpret it as telling us to do what already seems like common sense, then it’s definitely not a very good theory.
I am so tempted to print your comment out and show it to my teacher...
This sounds like the easiest and most fruitful of the exercises you offered. I don’t really have a ‘naive model’–I’ve never trusted my intuitions particularly, and they’re mostly silent on nursing-related stuff, probably because as of yet I have hardly any clinical experience.
Sounds very useful, but also exhausting on the brain. I’ll see how brain-exhausted I am after studying for my upcoming exams, and how many pages I can get out of the other suggestions. (I may not be genuinely curious enough about this to keep working on it after the essay is handed in.) Thanks, though!