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The Concept Of Patient Needs Using Murray's Theory Of Human Press

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Kolcaba (1994) expanded the concept of patient needs using Murray’s (1938) theory of human press, hanging nursing concepts on his abstract framework and developing relationships between needs, interventions, outcomes, and comfort. Kolcaba (2003) created a diagram of the CT, substructed from the theory of human press. Researchers individualize the diagram, starting with line four. Each researcher then develops unique versions of lines five and six. Each item on line five should have a conceptual definition and each item on line six should have operational definitions. CT may be applied to interdisciplinary healthcare at any stage, demonstrating transferability (Kolcaba, 2003). While there are few variables in the theory, not all the variables have to be utilized. Kolcaba permits researchers to develop the TS to fit their own comfort interventions, instruments, or settings. CT has well-defined and meaningful terminology, allowing for measurement of concepts and testing of hypotheses. To provide for measurement, Kolcaba developed the General Comfort Questionnaire (GCQ), a Likert-type scale with 48 items. She permits researchers to delete non-relevant items from the GCQ and replace the deleted items with questions specific to the study. She recommended items on the GCQ be related to the present moment, be state-specific, express a neutral-tone, have six possible responses to each question, and avoid compound statements. To obtain reliability, she suggested

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