According to Professors Ruth F. Craven and Constance J. Hirnle, a nursing theory is a body of concepts that guides both practice and research.
Teaching theory, as Craven and Hirnle note, instills in students a better sense of what nursing is and is not, its values, focuses and aims.
According to Craven and Hirnle, graduates of nursing programs, if informed by theory, are better prepared to advocate for their patients against opposition from managed-care organizations, which often aim primarily to cut costs, not provide the best care.
Nursing theory, as Craven and Hirnle note, orients students to spot problems in providing comfort, preventing trauma and promoting recovery, and to seek solutions to those problems through systematic investigation.
In preparing students to do research, theory also prepares them for the future. As Lee Anderson and Kathy Penningroth observe in their history of nursing at the University of Iowa, doing research is increasingly a requirement for faculty promotion and tenure at colleges of nursing.