Contemporary nursing wisdom in the UK and ethical knowing: difficulties in conceptualising the ethics of nursing. (31st October 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Newham, Roger; Curzio, Joan; Carr, Graham; Terry, Louise
• Is Part Of: Nursing philosophy. Volume 15:Number 1(2014:Jan.)
• Page Start: 50
• Page End: 56
• Publication Date: 2013-10-31
• Subjects: Nursing -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Nursing -- Periodicals; 610.17
• DOI: 10.1111/nup.12028
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1466-7681

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>This paper's philosophical ideas are developed from a General Nursing Council for England and Wales Trust‐funded study to explore nursing knowledge and wisdom and ways in which these can be translated into clinical practice and fostered in junior nurses. Participants using Carper's (1978) ways of knowing as a framework experienced difficulty conceptualizing a link between the empirics and ethics of nursing. The philosophical problem is how to understand <italic>praxis</italic> as a moral entity with intrinsic value when so much of value seems to be technical and extrinsic depending on desired ends. Using the Aristotelian terms <italic>poesis</italic> and <italic>praxis</italic> can articulate the concerns that the participants as well as Carper (1978) and Dreyfus (in Flyvbjerg, 1991) among others share that certain actions or ways of knowing important for nursing are being devalued and deformed by the importance placed on quantitative data and measurable outcomes. The sense of <italic>praxis</italic> is a moralized one and most of what nurses do is plausibly on any account of normative ethics a morally good thing; the articulation of the idea of <italic>praxis</italic> can go some way in showing how it is a part of the discipline of nursing. Nursing's acts as <italic>poesis</italic> can be a part of how practitioners come to have <italic>praxis</italic> as <italic>phronesis</italic> or practical wisdom. So to be a wise nurse, one needs be a wise person.</p> </abstract>