Nursing has arrived at acceptance of several and diverse paradigms in conceptualization of its phenomena, research methodologies, and guidance of the discipline. Scholars and clinicians recognize the interaction of the person with the environment. Some implicitly focus on the experiences of stress, human responses, or efforts to cope with stress and movement toward adaptation or integrity of function. Stress-coping-adaptation is a complex conceptual framework with features powerful enough to explain nursing's phenomena of concern. Discourse dealing with stress-coping-adaptation as integral in nursing theory, research, practice, and education is warranted at this time.