Purpose

The story theory was created to call attention to the importance of listening to patients stories as well noting the therapeutic value of story telling.  It places a high value on the importance of stories for health promotion. The proponents believes that stories creates possibilities for application, evaluation and modification of current practices, researches and ideas.

Other purpose include:

- To describe and explain story as the context for a nurse-person health-promoting process. The theory was developed to provide a story-centered structure for guiding nursing practice and research.
- To place emphasis on the vitality of stories as part of the human experience, and that these stories bind people and time. Stories transcend time, generations, and even cultures and may help determine patterns in the past as well as predict future patterns. The story theory is a context for the nurse-client health promotion process and is a structure in guiding nursing practice as well as research by collecting stories about situations pertinent to the client’s health.
- The story theory was postulated to highlight the value of story and story telling in the health promotion process between the nurse and client. A story-centered paradigm was theorized as a guide for practice and research. The core of the nurse-client relationship is intentional dialogue through which the nurse establishes a relationship. In this relationship therefore, stories are collected about the health or situations regarding the health of the person, and in turn these stories can be utilized, and so on and so forth.