She also described her model as revolving around the following five major interrelated concepts: function of professional nursing, presenting behavior, immediate reaction, nursing process discipline, and improvement. The function of professional nursing is the organizing principle. Presenting behavior is the patient’s problematic situation. The immediate reaction is the internal response. The nursing process discipline is the investigation into the patient’s needs. And lastly, improvement is the resolution to the patient’s situation.
The Deliberative Nursing Process has five stages: assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Nurses use the standard nursing process in Orlando’s Nursing Process Discipline Theory to produce positive outcomes or patient improvement. Orlando’s key focus was the definition of the function of nursing. The model provides a framework for nursing, but the use of her theory does not exclude nurses from using other nursing theories while caring for patients.