16/02/2015

The History of Knowledge

Development in Nursing

Kusman Ibrahim, PhD

Faculty of Nursing, Padjadjaran University

Introduction
Nursing knowledge is drawn from a multifaceted
base and includes evidence that comes from
science (research and evaluation), experience and
personally derived understanding.
Scientific knowledge is developed through enquiry
and can use the research approaches
However, not the only form of evidence used by
nurses in their practice, nurses also use
experience gained from practice itself and their
own personal learning
Nursing knowledge refers to knowledge
warranted as useful and significant to nurses and
patients in understanding and facilitating human
health processes. (Reed & Lawrence, 2008, p. 423 cited in
Risjord, 2010)

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From Antiquity to Nightingale

Routine care of the sick
Influenced by the healing traditions
within society
Healers linked disease with spirit
world
Rituals or ceremonies were used to
dispel perceived evil and invoke
good
Plants and herbal remedies were
used for healing

Nightingales legacy
The need for a uniformly high
standard of nursing care that
required both education and
certain personal characteristics
Recognition of nursing as a
professional endeavor distinct
from medicine
Notes on Nursing (1969)
Nursing utility of empirical
knowledge (statistics)
Nursing assist nature in healing
the patients
St. Thomas School of Nursing in
London

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From Nightingale to Science

1900s to about 1950
Loss of the Nightingale ideal
Medical care system developed as a
capitalist, for profit business
Medical care was taking shape as a science
Women viewed as incapable of practicing
medicine and unqualified to be scientist
Women seen as a source of inexpensive or
free nursing labor
Nurses were exploited both as student and
as experienced worker

From Nightingale to Science

The entrenchment of apprenticeship learning
Nursing knowledge has not been regarded as
distinct from medicine
Control of nursing education and practice
was transferred from profession to hospital
administrator and physician
Higher education for nurses was not available
Nursing was viewed primarily as a nurturing
and technical art that required apprenticeship
learning and innate personality traits
congruent with the art

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From Nightingale to Science

Persistence of Nursing Ideals
Commitment to the idea that nursing
required a knowledge base for practice
distinct from medicine, and not provided by
medicine or other single discipline outside
of nursing
Many nurse leaders were active in
confronting community-based social and
health issues
These experience cultivated and required a
broad view of nursing knowledge and a
desire to change the future of nursing

The Emergence of Nursing as A Science

The shift toward a concept of nursing
knowledge as predominantly scientific
began in the 1950s and took a strong
hold in the 1960s
Gradually, nursing shifted from a
perspective that emphasize technical
competence, duty, and womanly virtue
to a perspective that focused more on
effective nursing practice
1950s, the first nursing research journal
Nursing Research was established,
books on research methodologies and
explicit conceptual frameworks
theories of nursing began to appear
1960s, doctoral programs in nursing
were established

http://journals.lww.com/nursingre
searchonline/Pages/default.aspx

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Early Trends in The Development of

Nursing Science
Utilization of theories borrowed from
other disciplines
Development of conceptual frameworks
defining nursing
The development of middle-range theory
linked to practice

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Trends in Knowledge Development

The move from methodology

Interpretive and Critical Approach
Postructuralist Approach
Deconstruction and Postmodernism
Evidence-Based Practice
Practice-Based Evidence and
Translational Research