Nursing is a practice that requires emotional intelligence and clinical intelligence of the nursing staff. Understanding the different nursing theories that underpin treatment standards highlights the ways that patient outcomes are assured and achieved. The theories that are a part of modern healthcare include grand, mid-range and practice-level. Each of these theories has a role in the delivery of patient care, and understanding the benefits and the obsolescence of nursing grand theories is important to the general importance of nursing practice. The ongoing development and use of nursing grand theories and the obsolescence of nursing grand theories have equal sway in the ongoing development and enhancement of nursing practice standards.

The case for the ongoing development and use of nursing grant theories is that it helps nurses to maintain their humanity. Enhancing the empathy and understanding of human relationships and behaviors for nurses can help patients in more meaningful ways. Nursing grand theories provide broad scope for patient care and serve a function in patient outcomes when applied effectively to care delivery (Brandão & Santana, 2023). The understanding of the foundational aspect of nursing grand theories rests in the ability for future research and development for nursing professionals. Without having nursing grand theories, which can be understood to change with time, additional directional research cannot be undertaken (Brandão & Santana, 2023). This is why having nursing grand theories is important, even though the knowledge of these theories must also be counter-balanced with the understanding that the. Most nuanced theories built on these grand theories may change with time but as long as this is understood in the context of teaching and incorporating these theories, then they can still serve a purpose.

The case for the obsolescence of nursing grant theories for today’s practice and research is that nurses need to remain educated on more specific treatment methodologies and contextual care. The clinical relevance of nursing grand theories can leave something to be desired in the real-world applications of patient care. This is pivotal because empirical testing is a necessary part of effective nursing practice (Brandão & Santana, 2023). Without understanding the result of particular nursing practice standards, the means by which those practices will impact on patient outcomes cannot be known. If there is no means of outlining which nursing grand theory leads to outcome specifics, then those theories prove less useful to ongoing nursing practice standards. This is why nursing grand theories may face some obsolescence in their lack of constant benefit to the nursing community’s intervention nursing standards.

The ongoing development of nursing practice standards requires understanding of both the benefits and the obsolescence of nursing grand theories. While there are benefits and drawbacks to these theories, the knowledge that nursing will always change and grow with time and scientific updates requires ongoing use of nursing grand theories. This is because the human engagement that nursing grand theories often highlight is a required component of effective nursing practices. This is true even though there will be gradual changes in the mid-level and practice-level theories that will color the healthcare intervention techniques undertaken in patient care.