Callista Roy

Roy was Professor and Nursing Theorist at Boston College's Connell School of Nursing. In 1991, she founded the Boston Based Adaptation Research in Nursing Society (BBARNS), which would later be renamed the Roy Adaptation Association. She has lectured across the United States and in more than thirty other countries. Late in her career, she studied the role of lay study partners in recovery from mild head injury. She retired from Boston College in 2017 and moved back to California.

During her graduate studies, Roy was compelled by instructor Dorothy E. Johnson to write a conceptual model of nursing. The Roy Adaptation Model was first published in Nursing Outlook in 1970. In this model, humans (as individuals or in groups) are holistic, adaptive systems. The environment consists of internal and external stimuli that surround an individual or group. Health is seen as a sound, unimpaired condition leading to wholeness. Nursing's goal is to promote modes of adaptation that support overall health.

Roy earned an undergraduate degree in nursing from Mount St. Mary's College in 1963, followed by a master's degree in nursing from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1966. She then earned master's and doctoral degrees in sociology from UCLA. She served as a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. She has been awarded four honorary doctorates.

Sister Callista Roy, CSJ (born October 14, 1939) is an American nun, nursing theorist, professor and author. She is known for creating the adaptation model of nursing. She was a nursing professor at Boston College before retiring in 2017. Roy was designated as a 2007 Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing.