Her publications include Better Nursing Care Through Nursing Research and Patient-Centered Approaches to Nursing. She also developed educational materials in many areas of public health, including AIDS, hospice care, and drug addiction. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000. Additional works written by Faye Abdellah include:

1. TYPOLOGY OF 21
NURSING PROBLEMS
• BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 1

2. BIOGRAPHY:
• Faye Glenn Abdellah
• (March 13, 1919 – present)
• She is a nursing research pioneer who
developed the “Twenty-One Nursing
Problems.”
• Her nursing model was progressive for the time
in that it refers to a nursing diagnosis during a
time in which nurses were taught that
diagnoses were not part of their role in health
care.
• She was the first nurse officer to rank a two-
star rear admiral, the first nurse, and the first
woman to serve as a Deputy Surgeon General.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
2

3. EARLY LIFE
•Born on March 13, 1919, in New York
to an Algerian Father and a Scottish
Mother.
•Her family subsequently moved to
New Jersey, where she attended high
school.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
3

4. EARLY LIFE
TURNING POINT OF HER LIFE:
• On May 6, 1937, the German hydrogen-fueled airship
Hindenburg exploded over Lakehurst.
• Abdellah and her brother witnessed the explosion,
destruction, and fire after the ignited hydrogen killed
many people.
• She realized that that she would never again be
powerless to assist when people were in such a dire
need of assistance. It was at that moment she vowed
that she would learn to nurse and become a
professional nurse.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
4

5. EDUCATION
• She earned a nursing diploma from Fitkin
Memorial Hospital’s School of Nursing,
now known as Ann May School of
Nursing.
• It was sufficient to practice nursing during
her time in the 1940s, but she believed
that nursing care should be based on
research, not hours of care.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
5

6. EDUCATION
• Abdellah went on to earn three degrees from
Columbia University: a bachelor of science degree
in nursing in 1945, a master of arts degree in
physiology in 1947, and a doctor of education
degree in 1955.
• With her advanced education, Abdellah could
have chosen to become a doctor. However, as she
explained in one of her interviews that she
wanted to be an M.D. because she could do all
she wanted to do in nursing, which is a caring
profession.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
6

7. AS AN EDUCATOR
• Faye Abdellah worked as a health nurse at a private
school, and her first administrative position was on the
faculty of Yale University from 1945-1949.
• At that time, she was required to teach a class called
“120 Principles of Nursing Practice,” using a standard
nursing textbook published by the National League for
Nursing. The book included guidelines that had no
scientific basis, which challenged Abdellah to explain
everything she called the “brilliant” students.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
7

8. AS AN EDUCATOR
• After a year, Abdellah gathered her colleagues in
the Yale courtyard and burned the textbooks.
• The school’s dean told her she would have to
pay for the destroyed texts.
• It took a year for Abdellah to settle the debt, but
she never regretted her actions because it
started her on the long road to pursue the
scientific basis of the nursing practice.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
8

9. BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
9
FAYE ABDELLAH,
DEAN, GRADUATE
SCHOOL OF
NURSING, USUHS

10. AS A RESEARCHER
• 1949: She decided to join the Public
Health Service.
• Her first assignment was with the division
of nursing that focused on research and
studies.
• They performed studies with numerous
hospitals to improve nursing practice.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
10

11. AS A RESEARCHER
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
11

12. •Abdellah's typology of 21
nursing problems is a
conceptual model mainly
concerned with patient's
needs and nurses' role in
problem identification using a
problem analysis approach.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
12

13. BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
13

14. BASIC TO ALL PATIENTS
• 1. To maintain good hygiene and physical comfort.
• 2. To promote optimal activity: exercise, rest and sleep.
• 3. To promote safety through the prevention of
accidents, injury, or other
• trauma and through the prevention of the spread of
infection.
• 4. To maintain good body mechanics and prevent and
correct deformities
Typology of 21 Nursing
Problems
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
14

15. SUSTENAL CARE NEEDS
• 5. To facilitate the maintenance of a supply of oxygen
to all body cells.
• 6. To facilitate the maintenance of nutrition of all body
cells.
• 7. To facilitate the maintenance of elimination.
• 8. To facilitate the maintenance of fluid and electrolyte
balance.
• 9. To recognize the physiological responses of the
body to disease condition.
Typology of 21 Nursing
Problems
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
15

16. REMEDIAL CARE NEEDS
• 10. To facilitate the maintenance of regulatory
mechanisms and functions.
11. To facilitate the maintenance of sensory function
• 12. To identify and accept positive and negative
expressions, feelings,
• and reactions.
• 13. To identify and accept the interrelatedness of
emotions and organic illness.
Typology of 21 Nursing
Problems
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
16

17. RESTORATIVE CARE NEEDS
• 14. To facilitate the maintenance of effective
verbal and non verbal
• communication.
• 15. To promote the development of productive
interpersonal relationships.
• 16. To facilitate progress toward achievement of personal
spiritual goals.
• 17. To create and or maintain a therapeutic environment.
Typology of 21 Nursing
Problems
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
17

18. • 18. To facilitate awareness of self as an individual with
varying physical , emotional, and developmental needs.
• 19. To accept the optimum possible goals in the light of
limitations, physical and emotional.
• 20. To use community resources as an aid in resolving
problems arising from illness.
• 21. To understand the role of social problems as
influencing factors in the case of illness
Typology of 21 Nursing
Problems
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
18

19. Person
• Abdellah describes people as having physical,
emotional, and sociological needs. These needs
may overt, consisting of largely physical needs, or
covert, such as emotional and social needs.
• Patient is described as the only justification for
the existence of nursing.
• Individuals (and families) are the recipients of
nursing
• Health, or achieving of it, is the purpose of
nursing services.
Abdellah’s Metaparadigm in
Nursing
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III
19

20. Abdellah’s Metaparadigm in
Nursing
Nursing
 Nursing is a helping profession. In Abdellah’s model, nursing
care is doing something to or for the person or providing
information to the person with the goals of meeting needs,
increasing or restoring self-help ability, or alleviating
impairment.
 Nursing is broadly grouped into the 21 problem areas to guide
care and promote use of nursing judgment.
 She considers nursing to be comprehensive service that is
based on artand science and aims to help people, sick or well,
cope with their healthneeds.
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 20

21. Abdellah’s Metaparadigm in
Nursing
Health
In Patient –Centered Approaches to
Nursing, Abdellah describes health as a
state mutually exclusive of illness
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 21

22. Abdellah’s Metaparadigm in
Nursing
Society/Environment
The environment is the home or
community from which patient comes
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 22

23. ASSESSMENT PHASESESSMENT PHASE
•Nursing problems provide guidelines for the
collection of data.
•A principle underlying the problem solving
approach is that for each identified problem,
pertinent data are collected.
•The overt or covert nature of the problems
necessitates a direct or indirect approach,
respectively.
USE OF 21 PROBLEMS IN
THE NURSING PROCESS
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 23

24. NURSING DIAGNOSISNURSING DIAGNOSIS
•The results of data collection would determine the
client’s specific overt or covert problems.
•These specific problems would be grouped under
one or more of the broader nursing problems.
•This step is consistent with that involved in
nursing diagnosis.
USE OF 21 PROBLEMS IN THE
NURSING PROCESS
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 24

25. PLANNING PHASENING PHASE
The statements of nursing problems most
closely resemble goal statements.
Therefore, once a problem has been
diagnosed, the goals have been
established.
USE OF 21 PROBLEMS IN THE
NURSING PROCESS
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 25

26. IMPLEMENTATION
•Using the goals as the framework, a plan
is developed and appropriate nursing
interventions are determined.
USE OF 21 PROBLEMS IN THE
NURSING PROCESS
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 26

27. EVALUATION
According to the American Nurses
Association Standards of Nursing Practice,
the plan is evaluated in terms of the
client’s progress or lack of progress
toward the achievement of the stated goal.
USE OF 21 PROBLEMS IN THE
NURSING PROCESS
BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 27

28. REFERENCES
RN, A. G., BSN. (2014, September 29).
Faye Abdellah: 21 Nursing Problems
Theory. Nurseslabs.
https://nurseslabs.com/faye-g-abdellahs-
21-nursing-problems-theory/#h-biography-
of-faye-glenn-abdellah

BY: ROMMEL LUIS C. ISRAEL III 28