Biography

The Theorist

Dr. Rosemarie Rizzo Parse

Dr. Rosemarie Rizzo Parse is an almuna of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and finished her master’s and doctorate degrees from the same University. She was a faculty member of the University of Pittsburgh  and was a Dean of the Nursing School at Duquesne University. For 10 years (1983-1993) Dr. Parse was a professor and coordinator of the Center for Nursing Research  at Hunter College of the City University of New York. From 1993-2006, she was a Professor and Niehoff Chair at Loyola University in Chicago. Since January 2007 she has been a Consultant and Visiting Scholar at the New York Unviersity College of Nursing.

Editor and Founder of Nursing Science Quarterly  and published eight (8) books and hundreds of articles about Human Becoming Theory.  Dr. Parse first publised her theory in 1981 as the “Man-Living-Health”. The name was officially changed to “the Humanbecoming Theory” in 1992 to remove the term “man” after the change in the dictionary definitiono f the word from its former meaning of “humankind”.

Dr. Parse is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing where she initiated and is the immediate past Chair of the nursing theory-guided practice expert panel. In her role as Editor of Nursing Science Quarterly, she has spear-headed a well-known, highly cited venue for nurse scholars to share and to debate matters important to nursing research and theory development. For this and her other works, Dr. Parse has received several honors. She has been given two Lifetime Achievement Awards (one from the Midwest Nursing Research Society and one from the Asian American Pacific Islander Nurses Association), the Rosemarie Rizzo Parse Scholarship was endowed in her name at the Henderson State University School of Nursing, her books were twice named to the “best picks” list of theory books by Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society in Nursing, and the Society of Rogerian Scholars honored her with the Martha E. Rogers Golden Slinky Award. In 2008 she was the recipient of the New York Times Nurse Educator of the Year Award.

Her most recent work is Hope: An International Human Becoming Perspective (1999). Previous works include Nursing Fundamentals (1974); Man-Living-Health: A Theory of Nursing (1981); Nursing Science: Major Paradigms, Theories, and Critiques (1987); Illuminations:The Human Becoming Theory in Practice and Research (1995); and The Human Becoming School of Thought (1998).

The Human Becoming Theory of Parse guides nurses in their practice to focus on quality of life as it is described and lived ( Karen & Melnechencko, 1995). It also presents an alternative to both the conventional bio-medical approach and the bio-psycho-social-spiritual (but still normative) approach of most other theories of nursing.

Watch a video of an  interview of Dr. Parse below: 

Contributors:

• Kevin Davidson Adviento
• Yara Ilul

References:

• Parker, M. 2001 Nursing Theories and Nursing Practice pp 226-238.
• http://www.humanbecoming.org/rosemarie-rizzo-parse.php
• http://www.slideshare.net/rsmehta/human-becoming-theory-28585710
• http://www.humanbecoming.org/human-becoming.php