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Dorothy Johnson

Dorothy Johnson was an influential nursing professor and theorist. She defined nursing as helping patients maintain optimal behaviors during illness or threats to health. Her behavioral theory from 1968 focused on how clients adapt to stress from illness and how nursing can reduce stress to aid recovery. Johnson viewed individuals as having patterned behaviors across seven subsystems, including affiliation, dependency, and achievement. The goal of nursing is to help clients maintain equilibrium across these behavioral subsystems.

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409 views2 pages

Dorothy Johnson

Dorothy Johnson was an influential nursing professor and theorist. She defined nursing as helping patients maintain optimal behaviors during illness or threats to health. Her behavioral theory from 1968 focused on how clients adapt to stress from illness and how nursing can reduce stress to aid recovery. Johnson viewed individuals as having patterned behaviors across seven subsystems, including affiliation, dependency, and achievement. The goal of nursing is to help clients maintain equilibrium across these behavioral subsystems.

Uploaded by

jomsportg
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Dorothy Johnson

>Dorothy E. Johnson was born August 21, 1919, in Savannah,


Georgia.
>B. S. N. from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1942; and her M.P.H. from
Harvard University in Boston in 1948.
>From 1949 until her retirement in 1978 she was an assistant professor of pediatric nursing,
an associate professor of nursing, and a professor of nursing at the University of California in
Los Angeles.
>Dorothy Johnson has had an influence on nursing through her publications since the 1950s.
Throughout her career, Johnson has stressed the importance of research-based knowledge
about the effect of nursing care on clients.

Definition of Nursing According to Johnson:

She defined nursing as “an external regulatory force which acts to preserve the organization
and integration of the patients behaviors at an optimum level under those conditions in which
the behaviors constitutes a threat to the physical or social health, or in which illness is found”

“Behavioral Theory”
Dorothy Johnson’s theory of nursing 1968 focuses on how the client adapts to illness and how
actual or potential stress can affect the ability to adapt. The goal of nursing to reduce stress
so that; the client can move more easily through recovery.

Johnson believes each individual has patterned, purposeful, repetitive ways of acting that
comprise a behavioral system specific to that individual. These actions and behaviors form an
organized and integrated functional unit that determines and limits the interaction between
the person and his environment and establishes the relationship of the person to the objects
event situations in the environment. These behaviors are “orderly, purposeful and predictable
and sufficiently stable and recurrent to be amenable to description and explanation”

Johnson’s Behavioral Subsystem

 Attachment or affiliative subsystem: “social inclusion intimacy and the formation and


attachment of a strong social bond.”
 Dependency subsystem: “approval, attention or recognition and physical assistance”
 Ingestive subsystem: “the emphasis is on the meaning and structures of the social
events surrounding the occasion when the food is eaten”
 Eliminative subsystem: “human cultures have defined different socially acceptable behaviors
for excretion of waste ,but the existence of such a pattern remains different from culture to Culture.”
 Sexual subsystem:” both biological and social factor affect the behavior in the sexual
subsystem”
 Aggressive subsystem:” it relates to the behaviors concerned with protection and self
preservation Johnson views aggressive subsystem as one that generates defensive response from the
individual when life or territory is being threatened”
 Achievement subsystem:” provokes behavior that attempt to control the environment
intellectual, physical, creative, mechanical and social skills achievement are some of the areas that
Johnson recognizes”.

Representation of Johnson’s Model

Goal —– Set — Choice of Behavior — Behavior

 Affiliation
 Dependency
 Sexuality
 Aggression
 Elimination
 Ingestion
 Achievement

Summary

Johnson’s Behavioral system model is a model of nursing care that advocates the fostering of
efficient and effective behavioral functioning in the patient to prevent illness. The patient is
defined as behavioral system composed of 7 behavioral subsystems. Each subsystem
composed of four structural characteristics i.e. drives, set, choices and observable behavior.
Three functional requirement of each subsystem includes (1) Protection from noxious
influences, (2) Provision for the nurturing environment, and (3) stimulation for growth. Any
imbalance in each system results in disequilibrium .it is nursing role to assist the client to
return to the state of equilibrium.

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