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Nursing Science Frameworks for Practice and Research as Means of Knowing Self

It has been said that adherence to a specific chosen belief system in nursing leads to premature closure on alternative interpretations of events and experiences, and that it is contradictory to the tenets and standards of qualitative research to adopt a specific belief system prior to analysis and interpretation of the raw data (Morse, 1991; Omery, Kasper, & Page, 1995). The vast majority of quantitative and qualitative research studies in nursing over the past 30 years have foregone naming any specific framework or belief system as an underpinning for the work, thereby setting a precedent of theoretical blank-mindedness that it has been necessary to overcome to further nursing theory-guided qualitative research (Mitchell & Cody, 1993; Sandelowski, 1993). It has also been suggested that it is experience that guides practice, and therefore the use of theory in nursing practice is at its best when an array of theories is kept at the ready and appropriate theories selected for situations as they arise, guided by practice experience (Maeve, 1994; Timpson, 1996). Proponents of these approaches to research and practice eschew adherence to any one theory or conceptual framework for nursing and suggest that such an allegiance could only represent a narrow viewpoint, bias, and closed-mindedness. Others, including this author, have argued that nursing theory-guided practice is the singularly most effective way for nursing to achieve its societal mission (Cody, 1994). In this article, I examine issues surrounding how nurses do and do not express their belief systems in research and practice. I contend that nursing science and nursing practice are best actualized through making explicit a personal belief system rooted in a philosophy and theory of nursing and then using that belief system as a guide to research and practice in nursing. By studying and using such a nursing framework over time, nurses can and do enhance their understanding of human beings and health. This much has long been accepted among the proponents of nursing theories. A dimension of the use of nursing theories that has been less explored, however, is the use of a nursing framework to better understand oneself. If a nursing framework describes human beings, health, and caring sufficiently to guide practice, there is no reason not to include the self in the cosmology or paradigm from whence it flows. Indeed, it has been increasingly recognized over the past few decades that knowledge of self is essential knowledge for nursing practice (Carper, 1978; Johns & Freshwater, 1997).