Title: Response to Kim’s Human Living Concept as a Unifying Perspective for Nursing
Abstract: As we begin the future of a new century, we are also beginning to design our professional history for that era. Certainly, we can simply choose to continue on the course carved out by the past. Or, we can decide to change direction and pursue different alternatives that lead to conditions of the possible, as yet limited only by our capacity to imagine them. In her thoughtful discussion of our progress to this point, Hesook Suzie Kim describes nursing’s scientific quest as yielding multiple theories, conflicting research findings, and competing approaches to patient care. Such diversity can be interpreted as evidence of conceptual confusion that perpetuates dissonance, characterized by Kim as a schism between nursing science and practice. Or, it can be perceived as a conceptual kaleidoscope of an evolving science that acknowledges an epistemic distinction between knowledge generation and knowledge in use. From the latter perspective, apparent dissonance is reformulated as a continuing dialectic between scientific constructions of reality crystallized in nursing theory and research, and social constructions of reality as manifested in the lived encounters of nurses in practice. In contrast to the first frame, in which nursing science and nursing practice appear to be at odds, the alternative view describes nursing as dynamically engaged in moving between the world of ideas and the world of events as it seeks to advance its understanding and contribution to human betterment. In other words, as a discipline, nursing may not always be comfortable, but there is sufficient evidence to conclude that it is alive and well. Nevertheless, there is much merit in Kim’s observations; new resolve and refreshing insights are the stuff of which breakthroughs in science are made. In her discussion on revisioning the nature of the client of nursing, Kim recasts our past as our future, echoing T. S. Eliot’s (1943) lyrical perception of renewal in return; that is, after much seeking, we arrive at where we started, to know it again for the first time. It is always welcome to be reminded that the original and enduring mission of nursing is the well-being of patients (euphemistically cleansed in the current vernacular of commerce as clients), and the opportunity to revisit that purpose is never untimely. But it is particularly appropriate at this historic juncture to raise the question, “Who is this client?” and to not be content with usual answers. In this sense, Kim’s proposal for revisioning the client domain through a pluralistic perspective contributes to the heuristic aims of nursing’s science as well as to its altruistic social contract of human service. In the spirit of advancing the argument, this response addresses two central points in her thesis: the client domain construct of human living and its framing within a philosophical perspective of pluralism.
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-01-01
Language: en
Type: letter
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'pubmed']
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Cited By Count: 14
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