The Philosophies Of Science And Nursing Science

For centuries the development of nursing knowledge has been influenced by numerous theorists and their respective theories. These theories have influenced, and continue to influence, nursing education, practice and research. (Johnson & Webber, 2005)

A theory is defined as “a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena (Merriam-Webster, 2017). In the nursing field, nursing theories have helped shape philosophies of many nurses in our history, as well as modern day. Every nurse, near and far, could probably tell you who Florence Nightingale was. She was a pioneer for women in nursing and made countless contributions to our field. Her nursing philosophy was based on Environmental Theory, “A belief that a person’s surroundings such as clean air, water,

The profession of nursing has, in recent years, been trying to further develop, test and use proposed nursing theory. To utilize theory appropriately, in all domains of practice, education and research, it is important to know how to describe, analyze and evaluate

anything thrown your way, yet sympathetic enough to be understanding of it. There is so much

When my grandmother was dying of cancer in hospice, I had no intentions of becoming a nurse. Consistently, I repositioned her because she was in pain. Dutifully, I opened her windows because she loved the sunlight. Respectfully, I rubbed lotion on her skin because it made her comfortable. Devotedly, I prayed with her because her faith was strong, and she was ready to be reunited with my grandfather. Wistfully, I held her hand as she took her last breath, and told her it was okay to go. Afterwards, when the hospice nurses had told me that I would make a great nurse and I should consider nursing as a career, I politely said “No, thank you, nursing is not for me.”

A nursing philosophy is the thoughts and beliefs about the job of a nurse based on one’s values. My values that have formed over the years have influenced me to purse a forever career as a nurse. I grew up in a small town Smithfield, Pennsylvania with my parents and younger brother. My community consisted of close relationships between the residents. Every one helped and cared for one another when needed. The practices of my community guided me to want to become a nurse. I want to continue to care for my community and give back to them by treating their illnesses and providing them with better health care. I am particularly interested in caring for pediatric patients. My goal is to try to provide every infant a chance to live their beautiful life created for them by God. While doing this, the primary focus of being a nurse will be to accommodate my patients and allow them to become a healthy person again.

To understand nursing philosophy, you must first understand what nursing means to you as an individual. To me nursing as well as nursing philosophy involves providing individualized holistic care to a patient, family, community, or even one’s own self. Holistic care is providing care involving the mind, body, spirit, and environment.

Knowledge can be produced using a variety of different methods. However, in the natural sciences sense perception through observation is used primarily. This can be seen through the work of researchers who often observe the results of experiments and trends in order to analyze different phenomena and perspectives. While there are many scientific methods based on scientific thinking using logic and predictability, the idea that

One advantage of using positivist methods of research is that the data is that the

Both Marxist and positivist stress the need for a rigorous scientific method, for scientific analysis of the social phenomenon and natural world.

The profession of nursing has matured from the time of Florence Nightingale. Nursing has gone from just treating dying soldiers on the battlefield to helping guide people through their entire lives from birth to death. The maturation of nursing has led to changes in nursing philosophy and allowed for practitioners of Nursing to meld these philosophies together to form their own philosophy. In this paper I will explain my philosophy of nursing and compare it to Virginia Henderson 's definition of nursing along with discussing some of the changes to Nurse philosophy I will also discuss some of the difficulties to being a patient advocate.

PART 1 What is nursing theory? How does nursing theory differ from theories of other disciplines? How does nursing theory relate to nursing practice?

Positivism is a rigorous and formal way to collect and analyze data that was developed around the 1960’s by Auguste Comte (1798-1857) who is also credited with formalizing it. Studies are clear and straight forward and researchers believe that there is only one method that all sciences should rely on. Positivism believes

Assumptions in the title of this essay imply that results, theories and laws resulting from the current system of peer review multiple perspectives produce completely infallible objective truth, this is a false premise. Whilst the group of knowers known as the scientific community have collectively less bias than one lone knower trying to understand the universe, there is still collective and engrained level of institutional bias. The same problems of confirmation bias and expectation are present in a group of knowers just as they are with one single knower. According to Karl Popper (1902-1994) the best way to eliminate any expectation and confirmation bias was to falsify and disprove rather than confirm one’s hypothesis and predictions. Popper argues: no matter how convincing an argument or theory is, all that is needed to disprove it is one piece of valid counterclaiming evidence. Whilst this theory is valid on an individual level, it really becomes an effective tool in the objectivity of science on a large scale. Despite this attempt at objectifying and ‘protecting against’ error and bias it is inadequate due to inherent flaws in the scientific method. Induction, moving from the specific to the general, is the key element in scientific logic. Any theory or law ‘proved’ through this logic has some key flaws: the main flaw being that inductive logic can never be certain of any event happening or of any prediction. Richard van de Lagemaat

Feminist interaction with the philosophy of science, and in particular a feminist interpretation of epistemology, concerns the extent to which bias influences and shapes knowledge within the scientific community, and means to rectify this. There are three main distinctions of feminist philosophy of science - feminist empiricism, standpoint theory, and postmodernism. I am to be comparing and contrasting two of the three, specifically feminist standpoint theory and empiricism. I shall argue that standpoint theory and empiricism are both legitimate methods for feminist epistemology, yet standpoint theory is a more applicable and plausible method for the analysis of science in particular. I will first explain the main tenets of the feminist philosophy of science, going on to then explain reasons why standpoint theory and postmodernism are legitimate tools of analysis in their own right, and then evaluate their legitimacy.