Addressing Nursing Knowledge

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The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of nursing knowledge and to explain how nurse researchers address the values that inform nursing practice.
It is hard to answer this question: “ what is nursing knowledge?” The difficulty in providing a clear definition for this question relies on the complexity of nursing dynamic. However, several researchers attempted to define it. For example, a synthesis of the multiple definitions that were provided by Roy for the knowledge of nursing from various philosophical and methodological approaches is: nursing knowledge is behavioral patterns and actions carried by a nurse, social interactions with patients and the environment, and it comes from the nurse’s understanding of the human beings (1995).
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There are many attempts by nurse philosophers to address the concerns regarding knowledge and practice. One approach that researcher could adapt to address the values that inform nursing practice was suggested by Rene Geanellos (1997). Using the research-theory-practice dialects as foundation for bridging that gap between theory and practice in nursing. It has been suggested by Geanellos that Kunh’s paradigm shift approach is an appropriate to identify the clinical issues in nursing care and then offer methodological and practical framework that is able to provide sufficient explanations. Roy (1995) suggested that the clarifying nursing care, its effectiveness and applicability might be the right approach to explain the value of knowledge for nursing practice. Both Geanellos and Roy emphasized two valuable points of view. First, in nursing, the clinical needs and what nurses do must help in identifying what knowledge means to the nursing profession. Second, the meanings, the clarifications, the explanations that will be used to define nursing knowledge must help us in transitioning theory to practice. Putnam (1992) stated that the