Margaret Newman

Margaret A.
Newman:
Health as Expanding
Consciousness
Tahmeena Batool
MCON, Multan
Background of the Theorist
• Margaret A. Newman was born on October 10, 1933, in Memphis,
Tennessee.
• She earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics and English from
Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a second bachelor’s degree in
nursing from the University of Tennessee in Memphis.
• Her master’s degree in medical-surgical nursing and teaching is from the
University of California, San Francisco.
• She earned her PhD in nursing science and rehabilitation nursing in 1971
from New York University.
Major Concepts
Health
• Health encompasses disease and non-disease. Health is viewed as a
process of "developing awareness of self and environment together with
increasing ability to perceive alternatives and respond in a variety of
ways.
• “Health is viewed as including disease as a meaningful manifestation of
the pattern of the whole and is based on the premise that life is an
ongoing process of expanding consciousness.
Pattern
• Pattern is what identifies an individual as a particular person.
• Example of explicit manifestation of the underlying pattern of a person would
be the genetic pattern that contains information that directs our becoming.
• Characteristics of pattern include movement, diversity, and rhythm.
• Newman developed pattern as a major concept that was used to understand
the individual as a whole being. She described as paradigm shift that was
occurring in the field of health care. The shift was from treatment of
symptoms of a disease to the search for patterns. Newman stated that the
patterns of interaction of person-environment constitute health.
• The process of patterning occurs if human energy fields penetrate one
another and transformation occurs.
Consciousness
• Consciousness is defined as the informational capacity of the system, the

ability of the system to interact with its environment.
• Three correlates of consciousness (time, movement, space) serve as
explanations for the changing pattern of the whole.
• Life process is seen as progression toward higher levels of consciousness.
The expansion of consciousness is what life and therefore health is all
about.
• Newman referred to the time sense as a factor altered in the changing
level of consciousness. Thus the perception of time is an indicator of
man's health status.
Cont.
• Movement: "Movement is the means whereby one perceives reality and
therefore, is a means of becoming aware of self."
• She maintained that "movement brings about change, without which
there is no manifest reality.“
• Time and space: Time and space have a complementary relationship.
When one's life space is decreased, as by either physical or social
immobility, one's time is increased.
• Time in Newman's model includes a sense of time perspective, that is
orientation to past, present and future.
Index of Consciousness
• He calculates the index of consciousness by establishing ratio of
subjective time (the number of seconds judged to have elapsed) to
objective time (actual clock time).
Therefore,
• Index of consciousness = Subjective time/ Objective time
Cont.
• In humans, consciousness is the information capacity includes not only all
the things we normally associate with consciousness, such as thinking
and feeling, but also all the information embedded in the nervous system,
the endocrine system, the immune system, the genetic code and so on.
• As human beings develop, consciousness grows, or expands. The
direction of life is ever towards higher levels of consciousness.
Basic Assumptions
Her initial assumptions were the following.
1. Health encompasses conditions heretofore described as illness or in medical
terms, pathology.
2. These pathological conditions can be considered a manifestation of the total
pattern of the individual.
3. The pattern of the individual that eventually manifests itself as pathology is
primary and exists prior to structural or functional changes.
4. Removal of the pathology in itself will not change the pattern of the individual.
5. If becoming 'ill' is the only way an individual's pattern can manifest itself, then
that is health for that person.
6. Health is expansion of consciousness
Central Premise
• Newman developed her central premise based on those assumptions.
She stated "Health is the expansion of consciousness. The process of
unfolding consciousness will occur regardless of what we as nurses do.
Characteristics of Humans
More currently, Marchione (1993) states that Newman's implicit
assumptions are that humans have the following characteristics.
• Open energy systems.
• In continual interconnectedness with a universe of the open systems
(environment)
• Continuously active in evolving their own pattern of the whole (health)
• Intuitive as well as affective and cognitive beings.
• Capable of abstract thinking as well as sensation.
• More than the sum of their parts.
Metaparadigm
• Person
A dynamic pattern of energy and an open system in interaction with the
environment. Persons can be defined by their patterns of consciousness.
Humans are continuously active in evolving their own pattern of the whole
(i.e., health) and are intuitive as well as cognitive and affective beings.
• Health
Health encompasses illness or pathology and that pathologic conditions
can be considered manifestations of the pattern of the individual. The
expanding of consciousness is Health.
Cont.
• Environment
Although environment is not explicitly defined, it is described as being the
larger whole, which contains the consciousness of the individual. Client
and environment are viewed as a unitary evolving pattern.
• Nursing
The act of assisting people to use the power within them to evolve toward
higher levels of consciousness. Nursing is directed toward recognizing the
patterns of the person in interaction with the environment and accepting
the interaction as a process of evolving consciousness.

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• Consciousness is defined as the informational capacity of the system, the

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