Dorothy Johnson Behavior System Model 1968 (USA)

Dorothy Johnson Behavior System Model 1968 (USA)

Dorothy Johnson was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1919. She earned her bachelor of science in nursing from Vanderbilt University and her master’s in public health from Harvard University. At the age of 49 years, Johnson proposed the nursing care facilitated the client’s maintenance of a state of equilibrium. She said that clients were ‘stressed’ by internal and external stimulus. The nursing care should reduce the stimulus and facilitate the client’s natural defenses. She defined nursing as ‘external regulatory force which acts to preserve the organization and integration of the patient’s behavior at an optimum level under those conditions in which the behavior constitutes a threat to physical and social health or in which illness is found’.

Based on the definition, the four nursing goals are to assist the patient to become a person whose behavior is commensurate with social demands, who is able to modify his behavior in ways that support biologic imperative, who is able to benefit to the fullest extent during illness from the physician’s knowledge and skill and whose behavior does not give any evidence of unnecessary trauma as a consequence of illness.

Major concepts of the model

Person

The client is seen as a collection of behavioral subsystems that interrelate to form the behavioral subsystems. The system may be defined as those complex, overt actions or response to stimulate in the environment. Johnson has identified seven behavioral subsystems in the client. According to this, each subsystem has to be protected from noxious stimulus. Second, it must be nurtured and last, it must be stimulated to prevent stagnation of growth. 

The subsystems are:

• Attachment and affiliation
• Dependency
• Elimination
• Sexuality
• Ingestion
• Aggression
• Achievement

Attachment and affiliation–It is identified as first response systems to develop in an individual. It allows social inclusion, intimacy and the formation and maintenance of a strong bond, which provides the individual with sense of security.

Dependency- It allows and develops cooperative and independent role relationships with in human social system. They use interpersonal skills to achieve intimacy. 

Ingestion – It is related to food intake. The aim of the subsystem is to sustain life, to relieve discomfort and to obtain physical pleasure from intake of food.

Elimination- It relates to behavior surrounding the excretion of waste products from the body. It also helps the client to adjust to alterations in biological capabilities related to waste excretion while maintaining a sense of control over waste excretion.

Sexuality- It relates to procreate, to gratify or attract to fulfill expectations associated with one’s sex, to care for others and to be cared about by them.

Aggression- It relates to behaviors concerned with protection and self preservation. Johnson views the aggressive subsystem as one that generates defensive response from the individual when life or territory is threatened.

Achievement- It means mastery or control of self or the environment. Intellectual, physical, creative, mechanical, social skills are some of the areas that Johnson (1980) recognizes.

To conclude, Johnson’s behavioral system model is based on nursing care, advocates on behavioral functioning of the patient. The client is composed of 7 subsystems and each subsystem related to 4 structural characteristics: drive, set, choices and observable behavior. An imbalance in any behavioral subsystem results in diseases and nurse’s role is to assist the client to return to a state of equilibrium.