Nursing as a Discipline
Nursing as a Discipline: It’s Interrelationship with Philosophy, Science and Ethics
Raymund Christopher R. dela Pena
Saint Louis University
The discipline of nursing is concerned with how nurses interact with people in relation to their health and within their total environment. Nursing at its core is caring for people within their health experience. The effective nurse is able to think critically, feel deeply, communicate clearly, interact meaningfully, assume responsibility, exhibit a thirst for knowledge and act morally.
The discipline of nursing slowly evolved from the traditional role of women, apprenticeship, humanitarian aims, religious ideals, intuition, common sense, trial and error, theories, and research, as well as the multiple influences of medicine, technology, politics, war, economics and feminism (Jacobs & Huether 1978, Keller 1979, Brooks & Kleine-Kracht 1983, Gorenberg 1983, Perry 1985, Kidd & Morrison 1988, Lynaugh & Fagin 1988).
Despite a growing consensus on a nursing paradigm, the definition of nursing as a discipline remains ambiguous (Hardy 1978, Jacobs & Huether 1978, Meleis 1987, Northrup 1992). Hardy (1978) believes dissent is characteristic of nursing 's preparadigmatic stage of scientific development where confusion and dispute over theory and research are a normal developmental stage. However, Hardy 's attempt to measure the performance of nursing against scientific advances germane to medical science has resulted in a negative, linear estimate of nursing as a discipline and failed to recognize nursing 's unique contributions to the health care of society. Furthermore, science had taken man apart but had not put him back together (Reed and Shearer, 2009). Philosophy was then sought out for the main reason to unify scientific findings so that man as holistic being might emerge. Scientific discoveries led then to knowledge explosion and philosophy intensified and made that knowledge more valuable. As
Raymund Christopher R. dela Pena
Saint Louis University
The discipline of nursing is concerned with how nurses interact with people in relation to their health and within their total environment. Nursing at its core is caring for people within their health experience. The effective nurse is able to think critically, feel deeply, communicate clearly, interact meaningfully, assume responsibility, exhibit a thirst for knowledge and act morally.
The discipline of nursing slowly evolved from the traditional role of women, apprenticeship, humanitarian aims, religious ideals, intuition, common sense, trial and error, theories, and research, as well as the multiple influences of medicine, technology, politics, war, economics and feminism (Jacobs & Huether 1978, Keller 1979, Brooks & Kleine-Kracht 1983, Gorenberg 1983, Perry 1985, Kidd & Morrison 1988, Lynaugh & Fagin 1988).
Despite a growing consensus on a nursing paradigm, the definition of nursing as a discipline remains ambiguous (Hardy 1978, Jacobs & Huether 1978, Meleis 1987, Northrup 1992). Hardy (1978) believes dissent is characteristic of nursing 's preparadigmatic stage of scientific development where confusion and dispute over theory and research are a normal developmental stage. However, Hardy 's attempt to measure the performance of nursing against scientific advances germane to medical science has resulted in a negative, linear estimate of nursing as a discipline and failed to recognize nursing 's unique contributions to the health care of society. Furthermore, science had taken man apart but had not put him back together (Reed and Shearer, 2009). Philosophy was then sought out for the main reason to unify scientific findings so that man as holistic being might emerge. Scientific discoveries led then to knowledge explosion and philosophy intensified and made that knowledge more valuable. As
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