Roy’s Adaptation Model of Nursing was developed by Sister Callista Roy in 1976. Roy’s model posits that a person is a bio-psycho-social being who’s in constantl interaction with a changing environment. The model explains how people adapt to environmental changes using four components, including person, health, environment, and nursing. According to Roy’s adaptation model of nursing, individuals use innate and acquired mechanisms to adapt. It uses the term individul to refer to groups such as families, organizations, and communities.

The Adaptation Model describes health as an inevitable dimension of a person’s life that is represented by a health-illness continuum. The model also describes health as a state and process of being and becoming integrated and whole. The environment within which individuals adopt has three components, including focal, contextual, and residual. The focal component can be internal or external and immediately confronts the person. Contextual component represents all stimuli present in the situation that all contribute to the effect of the focal stimulus. The residual component is one whose effects in the current situation are unclear.

The adaptation model has two subsystems, including the cognator subsystem and the regulator subsystem. The cognator subsystem is a major coping process with four cognitive-emotive channels such as perceptual and information processing, learning, judgment, and emotion. The regulator subsystem is a basic type of adaptive process that responds automatically through neural, chemical, and endocrine coping channels.

Roy’s adaption model has ten assumptions. First, that the person is a bio-psycho-social being. Second, that the person is in constant interaction with a changing environment. Third, to cope with a changing world, a person uses coping mechanisms, both innate and acquired. Fourth, that health and illness are inevitable dimensions of a person’s life. Fifth, a person must adapt to respond positively to environmental changes.