Theoretical Bases of Nursing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Theoretical Bases of Nursing - Essay Example Therefore, it is the requirement of acceptable theories to be flexible and dynamic enough to keep pace with the growth and changes in the discipline in clinical practice (Barnum, 1998. 15-37). Nursing is now considered to be a discipline of knowledge that includes an array of facts, concepts, and approaches to inquiry. The discipline of nursing is acknowledged also to be a community of scholars that includes nurses in all places where nursing takes place, and this is indeed scholarship in the sense that it shares commitment to values, concepts, and processes to guide the thought and work of the discipline. Consistent with thinking of nursing scholars about the discipline of nursing, is the idea that it needs nursing theories more than anything else. Moreover, professional clinical nursing today is just scholarship due to the fact that nursing works, now, on a unique and vast knowledge base that has matured through phases of development. Nursing as a professional practice science that is dedicated to the problem solving for human health issues, calls for scholars who are accountable for understanding these theories and conceptual frameworks to be able to utilize them in gu iding practice, research, education, and regulation (Chinn & Kramer, 1995, 27-48). Boyer's analysis of schol... Teaching, in his opinion is not simply a matter of dissemination and transmission of knowledge, but a form of scholarship. Therefore, it would involve transformation and extension of knowledge through the process of critical debates and an insistent examination, investigation, and challenge of both content and pedagogy. His assertion, that this could involve analysis of "various kinds of academic work, while also acknowledging" their dynamic interactions in order to form an independent whole would enable one to look at nursing scholarship in a broader context, allowing it to be seen and perceived as an interrelated whole with distinctive components that opens avenues for a varied approach to knowing (Boyer, 1996, 1-6). Boyer is one of the pioneers in the recent times, who assigned a meaning to scholarship, and proposed that there are four different categories of scholarship. The most familiar of them is the scholarship of discovery which is very intimately associated with original research. As expected, this form of scholarship would call for deeper comprehension of research processes and intense involvement with activities emanating from that comprehension. According to Boyer, there are four different categories of scholarship. The first and the foremost area of scholarship is that of discovery. The scholarship of discovery is intimately related to original research, and this demands activities that enhance a deeper understanding of the methodical aspects of the research processes. The deeper understanding of the research processes would tend to answer the discipline's pressing questions. This specific category calls for standards, significance of the research,