Development of Nursing Theory and Philosophy - Essay Example

"Development of Nursing Theory and Philosophy" is a wonderful example of a paper on care. Nursing theory is a collection of related concepts that come from a systematic view of the nursing phenomena. Most nurses and scholars have come up with different theories that are related to the nursing field. Developing these theories is one of the major challenges to the nurses as it requires a lot of patients and dedication to the field (Marguis, 2006). The theories are used by different planners as tools for developing the nursing profession. There exists five stages in the development of these concepts and they include;

1. Silent knowledge

This is blind obedience to those in authority in the medical field. This is the stage that most of the newly employed nurses are categorized including training schools and hospitals. The nurse does not have the knowledge or experience to carry out their own study and so depends on those on authority and obeys all they say as this according to them is the best option

2. Received knowledge

This is the stage when the nurse starts listening to others and gets challenged to start doing their own research in the nursing field. This stage is mainly based on university students who already have some little experience in the nursing field. There are also other scholars with nonnursing degrees but are willing to explore the nursing field. However, in this stage, the nurse still depends on the authorities of educators (Chinn, 2009).

3. Subjective knowledge

This is the stage where the nurse has started to get some sense of authority and has some negative attitude towards borrowed theories. There is a need to have their own theories and move away from the old and common theories. Most of the research at this stage is not focused at the clients rather at the nurses themselves. Experience at this stage is high due to the constant interactions with clients. At this stage, the nurse has learned to separate theory from reality and knows exactly what theories work in real life.

4. Procedural knowledge

This stage consists of both the connected knowledge and separate knowledge. Most of the emphasis is actually based on the procedures that people use to acquire knowledge. Each nurse wants to come up with their own theory of how knowledge in the nursing field is acquired. Nurses at this stage interact a lot and read other literature on nursing theory not to gather knowledge but to come up with mistakes that they can correct (Mcewen, 2011).

5. Constructed knowledge

This is the last stage of the nursing development theory. In this stage, the integration, of many types of knowledge is used. Most nursing theories are based on empirical and theoretical literature on nursing. The nurse has full knowledge of what is needed and most of the work is dedicated to the client. This is the stage that involves the coming up of different proposals and literature that is related to nursing as a whole. Most of the experienced nurses and scholars are in this stage and in most cases are found coming up with their own theories or with proofs to oppose other theories that have been developed.

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