Posted: 3/4/2011
Seven researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing (JHUSON) will attend the International Orem Society’s Conference on Prevention and Management of Chronic Conditions and the World Congress of Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory in Bangkok, Thailand on March 23-25.
Miyong Kim, PhD, RN, FAAN, Chair of the Department of Health Systems and Outcomes, will lead the delegation comprised of faculty members and PhD and post-doctoral students. “We’re joining self-care researchers from around the world to critically examine both old and new theoretical and empirical approaches to improving the self-care ability of individuals with chronic diseases,” she explains.
The SON team will conduct a symposium on Innovations in Self-Care Research Targeting Underserved Populations and present four topics: “Theoretical Innovations in Self-Care Research,” “Methodological Innovations in Self-Care Research,” “Technological Innovations in Self-Care Research,” and “Health Literacy as an Emerging Concept in Self-Care.”
The Sarah E. Allison Foundation, founded by alumna and former faculty member Sarah Allison, provided funds for faculty members Haera Han, PhD, RN, and Sharon Olsen, PhD, RN, AOCN, and PhD students Tam Nguyen and Karen Davis to attend the conference. The small private foundation was established in 2000 to promote and support the development and formalization of the practical science of nursing based on Dorothea Orem’s theories, including the self-care deficit nursing theory, the theory that is today considered the basis for the advancement of both nursing knowledge and nursing as a profession.
“We’re excited about sharing this with others and believe that by presenting these topics together we’ll stimulate interesting scientific dialogue,” says Nguyen.
Foundation founder Allison is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) School of Nursing Class of 1953 and received her BS in nursing from Hopkins in 1959. She founded the JHH Center for Experimentation and Development in Nursing, the first organizational unit in a department of nursing devoted to the development of nursing practice based on a theoretical nursing framework; it was also the first to deliberatively use Orem’s conceptualizations about nursing as the basis for developing nursing practice in a variety of health care situations.