Faye Glenn Abdellah’s patient-centered care theory: interrogating Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift

The nursing profession has experienced significant transformation, particularly through the contributions of Faye Glenn Abdellah, whose theory of patient-centered care introduced an essential shift in nursing practice. Abdellah’s model moved away from a disease-centered to a patient-centered approach, emphasizing a holistic perspective that addresses the physical, emotional, and social needs of patients. This paper explores the move from a disease-centered to a patient-centered model of care, together with a critical evaluation of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions. Kuhn’s framework of paradigm shifts in scientific disciplines is analyzed in Abdellah’s work, addressing the limitations of Kuhn’s model in explaining the evolution of nursing theory. This essay concludes that what the Kuhnian theory might portray as a “gestalt switch” from disease-centered to patient-centered care theory has rather been the result of complex, gradual changes, the latter or the new paradigm somehow building on the former.