FAYE GLENN ABDELLAH: BIOGRAPHY, THEORY AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

Faye Glenn Abdellah (1919-2017) was a nurse and a pioneer in nursing research, which earned her international prestige and fame. Thanks to her studies and contributions, nursing achieved a professional status and this allowed her to occupy positions of great responsibility, such as being a consultant nurse from the United States, principal investigator in the progressive care of the patient or head of the branch of nursing education. among others.

Abdellah was an excellent representative of all healthcare professionals, as all her research and efforts were directed towards improving the quality of healthcare provided to patients. She obtained great achievements in this field and also as a woman, leaving an indelible mark on history that is worth knowing.

Image Courtesy of Uniformed Services University, from flickr.com

Biography

Faye Glenn Abdellah was born in New York on March 13, 1919. Her father's name is unknown, as both surnames were acquired from her mother, Margaret Glenn Abdellah.

Her vocation for nursing awakened when she voluntarily assisted in the 1937 incident with the Hindenburg airship. It began to burn as it landed in New Jersey, killing 36 people and injuring dozens.

She began her studies that same year at the Ann May School of Nursing and graduated in 1942. In subsequent years, she earned a bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in education from Columbia University. While she was studying she did various jobs related to nursing in different institutions.

Abdellah passed away on February 24, 2017 at the age of 97.

Labor achievements

In 1949 he entered the Public Health Services of the United States where he worked all his life. Her work achievements include having been appointed as general director of nursing. The last seven years of her career prior to her retirement she was deputy director of surgery, becoming the first nurse and woman to hold this position.

Throughout all these years, Abdellah developed her theories, which would lead her to receive important awards and decorations for having given a radical turn to the concept of nursing.

In fact, Dr. Abdellah received approximately 90 professional and academic honors, such as the Allied Signal Award, for her research on aging.

He gained such prestige for his career that the Portuguese and Chinese governments consulted him on his theories to implement them in their countries. It was also a pioneer in creating a nurse exchange program in third world countries.

His theory on nursing

While nursing was nothing more than a science to acquire knowledge of to carry it out, Abdellah focused on taking care of the objective that this science had, namely, treating the patient.

In her work Typology of the 21 Nursing Problems, she created a guide that nurses could use to help their patients in a personalized way. This guide was lived in three parts:

The physical, sociological and emotional needs of the patient

According to Abdellah, the infirmary exists to help patients meet their health needs. Therefore, each patient must be evaluated personally and treated in the same way.

Problem solving between staff and patient

Abdellah stated that nurses are there to solve the health problems that patients or their families face. There are two types of problems:

• The obvious ones that the nurse will be able to solve with her skills.
• The covert ones, which are difficult to diagnose but which a nurse should be able to be prepared not only to detect, but also to solve.

Common elements in patient care

All patients, regardless of their problem or needs, should receive similar treatment and care in all cases.

Therefore, putting this theory into practice and using more specific terms, it could be said that Abdellah's theory consists of:

• All the patient's needs must be met.
• Help must be given to people by identifying and alleviating their health problems.
• How the needs of patients are met is the responsibility of the hospital.
• Self-care techniques need to be taught to patients.
• The nurse should always strive to maintain a therapeutic environment. A hostile environment will negatively influence the patient's recovery.
• The reason for being a nurse is and will always be to take care of the patient, analyze their needs and cover them.

Thanks to this theory and his many writings and books on the subject, Abdellah changed the concept of nursing for something more personal and focused on the real goal: taking care of people's health in the best possible way.

Contributions to nursing

With so many years of vocational research in the nursing field, Abdellah achieved great changes in this field. These were some of them:

-Created the system known as Diagnosis Related Group. This system allowed patients to be classified into groups according to the severity of their needs, as well as the products or services they should receive. Although there are improvements to this system today, it is still the main basis for them.

-Improvements in nursing education. Nurses in Abdellah's time were highly undervalued compared to doctors, but her studies created a sea change in the education nurses should receive given the work they did.

-He emphasized the importance of maintaining hygiene not only of the patient and the nurse herself, but also of the place where the work is carried out.

-Thanks to your studies, the first intensive care units came into existence, what we still know as ICUs today.

-It imparted extensive knowledge about illnesses little known at the time, such as AIDS, alcoholism or drug addiction.

-Offered information on geriatric and palliative care, as well as disease prevention.

-The list of everything this woman achieved thanks to her tenacious effort would be endless. However, her involvement as a member of the American Academy of Nursing, which she chaired for several years, helped her make health centers put her theory into practice. This undoubtedly caused a change in the American health system and the rest of the world.

References

1. Faye Glenn Abdellah. (2018, November 10). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Consultation date: 12:32, February 20, 2019.
2. Theories applicable to the nursing care process. bvs.sld.cu/revistas/enf/vol15_1_99/enf02199.pdf
3. Abdellah, Faye Glenn - National Women's Hall of Fame. (2019). Retrieved from womenofthehall.org/inductee/faye-glenn-abdellah.
4. Abdellah FG, Levine E. Developing a measure of patient and personnel satisfaction with nursing care. Nurs Res. 1957.
5. Bunge HL, Abdellah FG, Levine E. Better Patient Care through Nursing Research. Am J Nurs. 2006.
6. Abdellah FG. AIDS CONCEPTS IN NURSING PRACTICE. Mil Med. 2018.
7. Abdellah F. Setting standards for clinical practice. Nurs Stand. 2016.
8. Abdellah FG. Nursing's role in future health care. AORN J. 1976.