I have been honored to have opportunities to interact with learners (aka students) enrolled in a master’s degree program at St. Mary’s College School of Nursing in Kurume, Japan as part of my appointment as a Visiting Professor at the college. During our (virtual) time together in February 2023, I shared my firm belief that there is no theory-practice gap when a nursing conceptual model is explicitly used to guide nursing practice. Our discussion led to the learners contributing their experiences using Roy’s Adaptation Model ([RAM]; Roy, 2009) as a guide for their practice. Their choice of RAM follows from St. Mary’s nursing program being based on this conceptual model of nursing. Noteworthy is that the St. Mary’s College research center is the Roy Academia Nursology Research Center.

We have developed six case studies that are now posted in the “Practice Exemplars” Nursology.net section, each of which has been contributed by one of the graduate learners, of the application of RAM to various practice situations. Each case study, described in the report of the 2023 virtual course, illustrates how explicit use of RAM to guide clinical practice avoided any theory-practice gap. Application of RAM nursing process included identification of the individual as an adaptive system, assessment of behaviors in all modes of adaptation, which led to the identification of stimuli, nursing diagnoses, the goal of nursing, management of stimuli, and adaptation level.

The Master’s Degree students who contributed to the exemplars are

• Miyuki Higashijima, RN，Diploma in Nursing
• Chinatsu Iida, RN, BSN
• Aya Imamura, RN, BSN, PHN
• Hitomi Kaneko, RN, Diploma in Nursing, Advanced Midwife
• Kaori Nitahara , RN, ADN, Certified Nurse in Radiation/Oncology Nursing
• Yoshie Shiotsuka , RN, Diploma in Nursing, Nutrition Support Team Therapist; (Certified from the Japanese Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism)