The Dorothea E. Orem Collection consists of teaching and consulting records, correspondence, biographical and personal records, research materials, publications, and audio-visual materials relating to Orem's life and work. These papers document the development of Orem's Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory and General Theory of Nursing. The research, teaching, publication, and consulting records all provide a chronological basis for understanding this development as well as the dissemination of the Theory.
Acting as a nursing consultant, Orem wrote a report to the Indiana State Board of Health in 1956. This report represents the earliest formal expression of her ideas on nursing. She continued to develop these ideas throughout her years as an educator/administrator and in 1971 she published Nursing: Concepts of Practice, the work in which Orem outlines her theory of nursing. The sources of Orem's theory of nursing, the Self-care Deficit Theory, can be traced to 1) her nursing practice experience for the essential ideas 2) her formation/education for the formalization of those ideas. Input from Orem's students and colleagues contributed to the development of the theory over time. The Nursing Model Committee of the Nursing Faculty of The Catholic University of America and the Nursing Development Conference Group, an offshoot of the first group, both contributed much to the development of ideas. In 1973 the NDCG published Concept Formalization in Nursing: Process and Product. In 1980, a revised edition of Nursing: Concepts of Practice was published reflecting the influences of the NDCG. During the 1980s Orem revised her book, and the theory was applied and tested in numerous places. Annual conferences and scholarly groups developed around the Self-care Deficit Nursing Theory during the 1980s. Today, the theory is taught and used all over the world and Orem is recognized as one the leading theorists of nursing practice and education.