Helping and nursing models

The concept of helping has not been acknowledged as a central issue in either research or theory development in nursing. Nevertheless, assumptions about helping do exist in current conceptual models of nursing. In this paper, these assumptions are analyzed from the perspective of the most recent theoretical models of helping developed by Brickman, Rabinowitz, Karuza, Cohn, Coates, and Kidder. What nurses say about how nurses help and the implications of these findings for future theory development, research, and education in nursing are discussed.