The Metaparadigm of Nursing: Jacqueline Fawcett

Before and after the 1960's, the leaders of nursing education wanted to develop a care theory including knowledge and basic principles to guide the practice of future nurses (Thorne, 2010, p. 64). Therefore, Jacqueline Fawcett introduced nursing meta paradigm. The meta paradigm identified "core concepts in that field without binding to assumptions of a specific world view" (MacIntyre & Mcdonald, 2014). Fawcett's Nursing Meta paradigm contains concepts related to people, environment, health, and care.

As explained in Jacqueline Fawcett's "Analysis and Evaluation of Nursing Conceptual Model" (1980), the meta paradigm is a very general concept that serves as the basis of the concept. Their purpose is to guide the activities of nurses including professional knowledge, philosophy, theory, educational experience, practical orientation, research method and literature (Meleis, 1997 and Marriner-Tomey and Alligood, 1998). (Barker et al., 2000) stated that the concept and value of care should be considered an essential environmental prerequisite from the recovery process. While providing patients with the necessary support to ensure emotional and physical safety, they explore the contents that need change, promote rehabilitation, explore possible roles of experts, families and friends in the exploration process

The original agreement on the concept of meta-paradigm in nursing was achieved in 1984. According to Fawcett (1984), the main concept of providing a structure for the field of care is people, environment, health and care. These meta-paradigm elements show the overall focus of the nursing field. Each nursing theory has a slightly different concept of the meta paradigm. Please refer to the section on "Selecting Care Theory" for how various theorists treat and link the concept of meta paradigm.