Theorist Interview

Theorist: Nola Pender Interview
Maryville University

We, as group 3, have chosen Nola Pender to Interview. She is a very busy women but has surprisingly made time for us. She has agreed to sit down with us and allow us to ask her a few questions, which we are sure she has answered many times before. When she arrived we were impressed, and felt a little underdressed, when she walked in in her blue business suite and hair obviously just fixed from the beautician. We started her interview with some fairly basic questions. They are as follows, what led you to nursing? What is your education background? This question made us feel like our work on our Master’s was kindergarten work. She is a very well educated women. We also asked, how many articles and books she has written. And how many awards she has received for her work. We were also very curious if she has experienced any gender bias during her work as a researcher? After those more simple questions, we jumped into the nit and gritty of why we wanted to talk with her in the first place, her theory. We want to know about her Health Promotion Model. We asked her exactly, “What is the Health Promotion Model?” We were taken back by the amount of thought and information that went into her theory. While answering that very broad question, one of the things she told us was that the patient’s and the nurse’s background were both vital to the success of the Health Promotion Model, so we asked her, “Why?” She also explained that self-perception was extremely important, so again we asked her, “why?” As we were so excited and over enjoyed with learning so much from such an influential person in nursing, she sat very calmly and answered each question very slow and deliberate with a kind smile on her face. We all learned so much from Nola Pender and were so appreciative of her to share her time with us.