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Introduction
In a broader perspective, science can be considered as an intellectual procedure involving physical and mental resources to enable one to sufficiently explain, understand, and predict usual as well as extraordinary natural phenomena (Thomas 1997). According to Brockopp and Hasting-Tolsma (2003), Florence Nightingale,
“believed that through observation, nurses could best determine care for patients. This early emphasis on methodical observation, as contrasting with trial-and-error methods in offering patient care, planted the seeds for the evolution of nursing science—an exceptional discipline of nursing knowledge” (pg. 5).
They added that nursing is a profession that is largely characterized by educational standards, autonomy, socialization, licensure, formal entry exams, technical expertise, public trust, code of ethics, professional standards that are used by all science-based disciplines hence, nursing is a scientific process that refines and validates existing medical knowledge-generating new knowledge in line with pure evidence-based nursing practice leading to increased patient care and credible nursing practices (Burns & Grove, 2001).
Therefore, the field of nursing science entails the full range of occurrences encountered by the nurses when practicing and managing health-related issues on their patients. Theorists argue that to understand this phenomenon, a practitioner has to think of and arrange the nursing theories in a hierarchal manner normally referred to as “meta-theory,” “grand theory,” “middle-range theory,” or “micro-range theory.” This paper will describe the development of nursing science in line with specific theories and events that boosted its nurture process. It will also describe the relationship between nursing science and profession while giving the influences of nursing science on other disciplines like philosophy, religion, education, psychology, and many more.
Main Body
Many theorists, for instance, Watson (1985) believed that nursing could be categorized both as a science and as an art, but since O’Hear (1990) argued that nursing concerns are considered as less exalted as compared to medicine, he viewed nursing as a science that should be completely encouraged. He even adds that there is no institution in the entire globe as prestigious as nursing science.
However, the development of nursing science can be traced from the inception of philosophical ideas and theories by the past theorists and science philosophers like Nightingale, Dickoff, James, and many more, who played important roles in relating nursing science to nursing practice by introducing a nursing practice theory that was aimed at recognizing and using nursing practice to foster professionalism and generate prescriptions for nursing practice (Collins & Fielder, 1981). However, all never went smoothly as nursing scholars ultimately proclaimed the existence of two paradigms of nursing knowledge i.e. qualitative and quantitative aspects.
But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the nursing body collectively agreed on the domination of the meta-theory of nursing science, a factor that would slightly contradict with Florence Nightingale’s secular entitled Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not (Nightingale, 1969). In this secular Nightingale oriented nurses specifically, on the modern scientific intervention on issues related to hygiene and public health. Nightingale’s poor perception that diseases were not caused by microorganisms but by unhygienic environments later triggered the development of even more elaborate scientific research in nursing and medicine. Schlotfeld (1960) and Johnson (1959) argued that nursing scientific research and theories should be prioritized over nursing practices that heavily depended on socially defined roles for the nurses.
In the 1970s logical positivism played an important role in framing nursing approaches to philosophical questions and solutions on matters related to science. Positivism theories further boosted the development of scientific, social, psychological, and biological nursing theories and professionalism in their work. The 1st generation nursing theorists like Virginia Henderson, Ernestine Wiedenbach, Dorethea Orem, and Hildegard Peplau, had focused on the functions of the nurse and the relationship between the nurse and the patient.
Hence, they were aimed at introducing a unified practice by delimiting the abstract laws to foster scholarly nursing based on scientific principles. It was in the wake of this reasoning that they introduced practice Theory in the early 1970s to allow and assimilate a wider range of nursing research activities. According to Dickoff and James 1968), practice theory was defined as “a conceptual system or framework invented for some purpose” (pg. 198) resulting in the formation of a situation-producing theory proposed that the social and moral mandate for nursing depends on its practice.
These changes championed by Jean Watson later saw the introduction of a qualitative and quantitative nursing research method known as triangulation. Many of the early writers and philosophers believed that it was the best method of scientific research in the 1980s due to its consistency. However, triangulation met stiff rejection from Powers (1987) who treated triangulation principles of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies as dichotomies for instance, particularistic vs. holistic theories, static reality vs. dynamic reality, and many more. He considered triangulation research as logically incoherent with nursing practice.
This led to the demise of positivism resulting in the adoption of the post-positivism philosophy of nursing science that saw the introduction of middle-range nursing theory between the late 1980s and early 1990s. The roots of middle-range theory can be traced from the discipline-based nursing theory.
Conclusion
The evolutions of nursing theories were aimed at developing a basic science of nursing leading to a general idea that nursing will have a distinctive body of knowledge and science only when positivist thoughts are linked with grand theory. Due to its unitary factor, middle-range theory legitimized the use of borrowed theories in nursing practice and research leading to the incorporation of the earlier rejected philosophical and scientific ideologies that paved way for the modern nursing science. Modern nursing practice, therefore, is a blend of ideas from both the middle-range and grand theory to provide a scientific and evidence-based nursing practice.
References
Brockopp, D., & Hastings-Tolsma, M. (2003). Fundamentals of nursing research (3rd ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Burns, N., & Grove, S. K. (2001). The practice of nursing research (4th ed.). Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Press.
Collins, R., & Fielder, J. (1981). Beckstrand’s Concept of Practice Theory: A Critique. Research in Nursing and Health, 4: 317-321.
Dickoff, J., & James, P (1968). A Theory of Theories: A Position Paper. Nursing Research, 17: 197-203.
Johnson, D. (1959). A Philosophy of Nursing. Nursing Outlook, 7: 198-200.
Nightingale, F. (1969). Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not. New York: Dover Publications.
O’Hear, A. (1990). An introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Powers, B. A. (1987). Taking Sides: A Response to Goodwin and Goodwin. Nursing Research, 36: 122-126.
Schlotfeld, R. M. (1960). Reflections on Nursing Research. American Journal of Nursing, 60: 492-494.
Thomas, C. L. (1997). Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. Philadelphia, PA: F.A. Davis Co. Publishers.
Watson, J. (1985). Nursing: Human Science and Human Care. New York: National League of Nursing.
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