A Foundational Analysis of Dorothea Orem's Self-Care Theory and Evaluation of Its Significance for Nursing Practice and Research.

In-depth understanding of the ontological and epistemological assumptions of nursing theories can be achieved through theory analysis. Several theory analysis criteria have been proposed for examining ontological and epistemological assumptions, but there are limited examples of actual analysis of these assumptions. This article presents an analysis of the ontological and epistemological assumptions of Dorothea Orem's selfcare theory and evaluates its significance for nursing practice and research.