[The discovery of Martha Rogers' model]

Wishing to increase awareness of the work of Martha Rogers (nurse, scientist and visionary), Nicole Allard, who teaches at the Université de Rimouski and is studying towards a doctorate at the University of Toronto, and Serge Landry, who teaches at the cégep de Granby, have produced an analysis of the theoretician's conceptual model. The Science of Unitary Human Beings. Rogers envisions the human being as a system of energy in motion within other such systems, themselves forming more complex systems. Each human being is said to be "unitary" and he or she can not be considered in isolation, separate from his or her environment. In "rogerian" perspective, nurses' work is to be done with unitary human beings in a state of continuous mutual exchange with their environment. And nursing's goal is to participate in this process of change in order to maximise each client's health potential. The model application accompanying the article illustrates the concepts and theoretical principles described.