Myra Levine

Nurse, teacher, nursing theorist

• Born: December 12, 1920
• Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
• Died: March 20, 1996
• Place of death: Illinois

Education: Cook County School of Nursing; University of Chicago; Wayne State University

Significance: Myra Levine’s four conservation principles of nursing redefined the role of the hospital nurse by theorizing that healing is directly related to the patient’s individual energy system and that the primary responsibility of the nurse is to create an environment that protects, or conserves, that critical energy.

Background

Myra Levine was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 12, 1920; her twin sister did not survive. She grew up during the Great Depression—her father, who suffered from chronic stomach problems, ran a small neighborhood hardware store, but the family struggled financially. Helping to care for her father, and watching her mother tend to him when he was ill, first cultivated her interest in nursing. She excelled in school and dreamed of a university education.

Determined to be a nurse, Levine completed her nursing diploma at Cook County School of Nursing in 1944, the same year she married Edwin Levine. Money was tight, but she continued her studies, completing her bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of Chicago in 1949. After a brief stint teaching at Cook County School of Nursing, she accepted the position as director of nursing at Drexel Home, a geriatric facility, where she would watch patients heroically struggling to fight the effects of often terminal diseases. She began to realize that the nurse was an integral part of that fight, far more than merely an administrator of directives from doctors. Following her husband’s acceptance of a teaching position at the University of Nebraska, the couple experienced the death of their first child, Benjamin, just three days after his birth. Levine recalled how the nurses deliberately kept apart from her, trained not to interfere with a patient’s grieving process.

Over the next several years, Levine held various nursing positions, including that of surgical nursing supervisor at Henry Ford Hospital, while eventually continuing her education, earning a master’s degree at Wayne State University.

Contributing Conservation Principles to Nursing

When Edwin accepted a teaching position at the University of Chicago, Levine turned to nursing instruction largely to help the family financially. She joined the faculty of the University of Illinois, Chicago. Enjoying the work in the classroom, she committed the next thirty years to teaching nursing, often designing brand new courses and curricula.

Levine decided to develop her syllabus into what became her first publication, in which she addressed her vision of nursing theory. The patient, she posited, was a complicated person with not only physical needs but also a specific cultural, ethnic, religious, and economic background, each aspect of which impacted and defined the identity and the integrity of the individual patient. Whatever the diagnosis, whatever the recovery regimen, the patient wanted only to return to health, to wholeness. The reality of illness, Levine argued, demanded new perceptions and adaptations to affect a response to the challenge of illness. Grounded in her practical background and her two decades of nursing experience, she acknowledged that the patient’s ability to respond was conditioned on many factors over which the nurse had no control: age, experience in handling illness, gender, religious background, hereditary factors, even income levels could impact how a patient responded to illness. However, she also argued that a nurse did have significant influence.

Levine defined four principles of conservation that the nurse impacted. First, the nurse saw to the conservation of energy, helping the patient function by addressing issues of appropriate hydration, food intake, rest, and fresh air. Since illness created an imbalance in the patient’s energy system—fighting illness fatigued patients—nurses needed to assist in restoring that balance. Second, nurses saw to the conservation of structural integrity, helping the body stay in good enough shape to prevent harmful agents from entering and paying attention to organ response, skin rashes, and any sign of infection or invasive disease; as part of this goal, the nurse kept a hygienically appropriate environment, from providing ventilation to clean linen and clothing. Third, nurses saw to the conservation of personal integrity, treating the patient like an individual with emotions whose sense of identity and self-esteem has been negatively affected by the onset of illness. The nurse needed to listen to the patient, communicate, and provide positive reinforcement to help restore that sense of integrity and identity. Finally, the nurse saw to the conservation of social integrity, helping to preserve the patient’s sense of family and friends (as well as their identity and position within a workplace and community) by recognizing the importance of that social ring in restoring the patient to full health. Nurses, therefore, treated patients holistically.

For thirty years, Levine crusaded for her compassionate and humane vision of nursing. She served as professor at several Chicago-area universities, most notably Loyola University, before she retired in 1987. Even then she remained a vigorous presence in the nursing field, speaking at conferences and serving as a consultant for curriculum development for numerous universities’ nursing schools. She died while in hospice care in Illinois on March 20, 1996.

Impact

In the classroom and in her publications, Myra Levine inspired a generation of nurses. In theorizing that a nurse responds to patients individually and that the nurse is responsible for creating an environment wherein healing and recovery can be optimized, Levine argued that health itself was more than medical procedures and recovery regimens; health was about restoring the integrity and very identity of a patient.

Personal Life

Myra Levine was married for more than fifty years and had three children, one of whom died after birth.

Principal Works

• Introduction to Clinical Nursing (1969)
• Renewal for Nursing (1971)

Bibliography

Alligood, Martha Raile. Nursing Theorists and Their Work. 8th ed. Elsevier, 2014. Print.

McEwen, Melanie, and Evelyn M. Wills. Theoretical Basis for Nursing. 4th ed. Philadelphia: Wolters, 2014.

Meleis, Afaf Ibrahim. Theoretical Nursing: Development and Progress. 5th ed. Philadelphia: Wolters, 2012. Print.

Sitzman, Kathleen L., and Lisa Wright Eichelberger. Understanding the Work of Nursing Theorists: A Creative Beginning. 2nd ed. Jones, 2011. Print.

Snowden, Austyn, Allan Donnell, and Tim Duffy. Pioneering Theories in Nursing. London: MA Healthcare, 2010. Print.