Joyce Travelbee

“The nurse is responsible for helping the patient avoid and alleviate the distress of unmet
needs.” - Travelbee

Introduction

 She dealt with the interpersonal aspects of nursing.

 She explains “human-to-human relationship is the means through which the
purpose of nursing if fulfilled”

Biography
 born in 1926
 Psychiatric Nurse, Educator, and Author
 Education and Accomplishments:
 Louisiana University BSN
 Yale University MSN;
 Nurse Educator of DePaul University, Charity Hospital School, New
York University, and University of Mississippi;
 Author of Interpersonal Aspects of Nursing and Intervention in
Psychiatric Nursing
 Travelbee died in 1973 at the age of 47.
Some of Joyce Travelbee's works include:

 Travelbee's Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing: A One-To-One Relationship

 Interpersonal Aspects of Nursing
 Intervention in Psychiatric Nursing: Process in the One-To One Relationship

The Human to Human Relationship Model of Nursing has seven basic

concepts.

1. Suffering - has a responsibility to help

an experience that varies in
intensity, duration and depth...a
feeling of unease, ranging from
mild, transient mental, physical or
mental discomfort to extreme
pain...."
2. Meaning
the reason attributed to a
person
3. Nursing
- is to help man to find meaning
in the experience of illness and
suffering.
individuals and their families to
find meaning.
4. Hope
- Nurse's job is to help the patient
to maintain hope and avoid
hopelessness.
Six important factors characteristics of
hope are:
 It is strongly associated with
dependence on other people.
 It is future oriented.
  It is linked to elections from
several alternatives or escape
routes out of its situation.
 The desire to possess any
object or condition, to complete
a task or have an experience.
 Confidence that others will be
there for one when you need
them.
 The hoping person is in
possession of courage to be
able to acknowledge its
shortcomings and fears and go
forward towards its goal
5. Communication-
- "a strict necessity for good
nursing care."
Interactional Phases of Human-to-Human Relationship Model:
1. Original Encounter
- First impression by the nurse of the
sick person and vice-versa.
- Stereotyped or traditional roles
2. Emerging Identities
- the time when relationship begins
- the nurse and patient perceives each
others uniqueness
3. Empathy
- the ability to share in the person’s
experience
6. Self-therapy
- " one is able to use
itself therapeutic."
- Self-awareness and self-
understanding, understanding
of human behavior, the ability to
predict one's own and others'
behavior are important in this
process.
- This refers to the nurse's
presence physically and
psychologically.
7. Targeted intellectual approach
- Nurse must have a systematic
intellectual approach to the
patient's situation.
4. Sympathy
- when the nurse wants to lessen the
cause of patient’s suffering.
- therapeutic use of self
5. Rapport
- Rapport is described as nursing
interventions that lessens the patient’s
suffering.
- Relation as human being to human
being
Nursing Metaparadigm

Person as measured by physical examination,

- Person is defined as a human being.
- Both the nurse and the patient are
human beings.
- A human being is a unique,
irreplaceable individual who is in
continuous process of becoming,
evolving and changing.
Health
- Health is subjective and objective.
- Subjective health—is an individually
defined state of well being in accord
with self-appraisal of physical-
emotional-spiritual status.
- Objective health—is an absence of
discernible disease, disability of defect
laboratory tests and assessment by
spiritual director or psychological
counselor.
Environment
- Environment is not clearly defined.
Nursing
- Nursing is an interpersonal process
whereby the professional nurse
practitioner assists an individual, family
or community to prevent or cope with
experience or illness and suffering,
and if necessary to find meaning in
these experiences.”

Application
Practice:
Hospice – self-actualizing life experience. Assumption of the sick role. Meaning of
life and sickness and death.

Education:
Teaches nurses to understand the meaning of illness and suffering.

Research:
Applied in the theory of caring cancer patients.