Loretta Zderad
Josephine Paterson
Dr. Josephine Paterson graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Masteral degree in Public Health Nursing and completed her Doctor of Science in nursing degree in Boston with a dissertation in Comfort, while Dr. Loretta Zderad is from Catholic University and mastered in Psychiatry. She finished her Doctorate at Georgetown University in Philosophy and dissertation is Empathy. Both finish their degrees in 1960s. In the year 1950, their career started when both of them are employed in Catholic University and stayed friends for almost 40 years.
While pursuing their doctorate degrees, they found that they had difficulty communicating their experiential view of nursing, and wanted to do so through a positivistic, scientific nursing theory approach. With this goal in mind, they began combining their knowledge of nursing and nursing theory with existential and phenomenological philosophies that they were both interested in. Through this addition of phenomenological philosophy applied to nursing, they believed they could articulate their process and personal theories of nursing. (UPOU MAN TFN, 2016)
With Paterson she noted that she experienced restlessness in feeling and it results to a bad understanding of nursing. ”Teaching in nursing was an offering of multitudinous theories developed in and for other disciplines using nursing examples” (Paterson & Zderad, p. 96)
In 1971, they begin to hypothesize their theory and research others experience and utilize their own theory as a tool to examines nurse’s experience. Their aim is to develop theoretical prepositions which will be a basis for nursing practitioners. With this process, a theory was developed and named: Humanistic Nursing Theory
The first book was published in 1976 with the title, “Humanistic Nursing”. Their initial commitment to creativity conceptualizes nursing constructs developed into “Nursology”, a phenomenological approach to studying nursing as an existential experience.
With a theory on hand, both spread knowledge through giving courses in the United States. While teaching they are still interviewing different nurses in regards to their experiences and through it, they created eleven essences: “awareness, openness, empathy, caring, touching, understanding, responsibility, trust, acceptance, self-recognition, and dialogue” They believe that these 11 essences are beliefs and values which are common to the nurses that they had interview which varies due to their culture, geography, scope of practice and other variable factor.
Josephine Paterson and Loretta Zderad retired in 1985 and moved South where they are currently enjoying life. Although they are no longer active, they are pleased at the ongoing interest in their theory.(Decker-Brown,n.d)