Nursing Philosophy最新文献

This essay builds upon the dialogue with Missel and Birkelund's reflections on the contributions of contemporary hermeneutics-particularly the work of Paul Ricoeur-to health research. While endorsing these authors' central thesis, the present discussion seeks to extend the argument by advocating for hermeneutics' relevance to clinical practice as well. Drawing on the ideas of Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas, the text critiques the excessive hegemony of techno-scientific knowledge over clinical practice and its harmful consequences for outcomes. It argues that revisiting Aristotle's distinction between theoria, techne, and praxis and fostering a genuine synergy among these spheres of rationality represents a potential hermeneutic contribution to the emancipatory reconstruction of health practices. The concept of Care is adopted as the philosophical horizon for this critical-hermeneutic reconstruction.

In this paper, I go back to one of Gary Rolfe's seminal papers entitled "Thinking as a subversive activity: doing philosophy in the corporate university" (2012), published in the journal Nursing Philosophy, to acknowledge and possibly expand on Rolfe's work on thinking, scholarship and the future of the nursing profession. Rolfe is a prolific academic nurse author, and while there is a thread linking his extensive authorship, his work branches out on a variety of sub-topics that this paper cannot do justice to, nor does it intend to be a comprehensive review of his work. In this paper, I aim to develop an account and provide my understanding, inspired by Rolfe's work, on how thinking, scholarship, and nursing science interlink and develop each other, and how scholarly thinking can potentially, notwithstanding certain caveats, flourish and guide the future of nursing education within the university sector.

This article critically explores the interplay between ubuntu and self-leadership as frameworks for understanding the moral, professional, and pedagogical development of nurse educators. While ubuntu is rooted in African communal ethics that emphasise interconnectedness, dignity, and relational being, self-leadership foregrounds the individual's capacity for self-direction, motivation, and personal mastery. At face value, these constructs may appear to rest at opposing ends of the philosophical spectrum with one prioritising collective identity; the other, personal autonomy. Using a transcultural philosophical lens, however, this study argues that ubuntu and self-leadership are not inherently contradictory, but can coexist and enrich each other in the context of transformative nursing education. Drawing from the life of Albertina Sisulu, a nurse, activist, and moral exemplar, the article illustrates how self-leadership practices such as resilience, self-regulation, goal-setting, and intrinsic motivation were exercised within an ubuntu worldview of care, service, and solidarity. This exploration emphasises the potential for a harmonised model of educator development that is grounded in both reflective autonomy and communal responsibility. The analysis is framed within contemporary debates on decolonising nursing education, calling for pedagogies that recognise African epistemologies while developing learners' self-determined capacities. The article engages critical perspectives on moral development, integrating ethical theories that span both individualistic and relational paradigms. In doing so, it reveals the limitations of binary thinking and the value of hybrid philosophical approaches in nursing education. The implications for curriculum transformation, educator development, and student formation are examined, highlighting the need for self-reflective, socially accountable nurse educators who can navigate tensions between in- and interdependence. Ultimately, the nurse educator is not a completed subject, but a figure in continuous becoming, shaped by the ethical urgencies of care, the ruptures of history, and the emergent demands of a pluralistic educational landscape.

Theories of everyday life provide valuable insights into the experience of health and illness. Everyday life, as an essential part of social reality, is characterized by routines, familiarity, and practices that offer meaning, orientation, and security. However, its ordinariness also enables transformation, as disruptions caused by illness or social change necessitate adaptation and innovation. Nursing extends beyond medical treatment by considering how illness affects daily routines, relationships, and emotions. A theoretical framework of everyday life is particularly relevant in nursing, helping practitioners understand how people experience health, illness, and care. Acknowledging the role of daily living supports people in integrating health challenges into their routines and fosters person-centered care. Given the absence of a unified theory of everyday life, this study synthesizes concepts from various thinkers against empirical insights on health and illness. Philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Schütz highlight the importance of everyday preconceptions in interpreting life. They argue that individuals navigate challenges by relying on familiar patterns and adapting their experiences within daily life. In contrast, critical phenomenologists like Ahmed, Yancy, Salamon, and Al-Saji challenge this perspective, arguing that experience is shaped by social, political, and historical structures, including ethnicity, gender, class, and colonialism. In turn, theorists such as Lefebvre, Heller, and de Certeau emphasize everyday life as a dynamic space where repetition, creativity, and social relations intersect. Together, these approaches form a foundation for understanding the significance of everyday life. The synthesis of these theories with empirical findings underscores that everyday life plays a crucial role in coping with health and illness. It provides stability and orientation while enabling change, making it both a source of security and a space for transformation. This dual role of everyday life can be leveraged in nursing care to support people in managing illness and adapting to health challenges.

The ongoing movement to decolonize nursing remains largely shaped by Global North perspectives. In solidarity with Global South voices working to center marginalized knowledge systems within nursing scholarship, this critical essay proposes Narsolohiyang Pilipino as a decolonial paradigm for theorizing nursing grounded in Filipino epistemologies and lifeways. Anchored in the Pluriverse of Nursologies (PoN), the paper advocates for the pluricentricity of nursing knowledge beyond Western and Global North (W&GN) paradigms. It begins by establishing PoN as the paper's philosophical foundation, then articulates the rationale for formalizing Filipino nursologies. Next, it describes Narsolohiyang Pilipino as a tentative decolonial paradigm for pagdadalumat (theorizing) in nursing, identifying its key philosophical movements: pagbaklas (disassembling) and pag-ugnay (connecting). Lastly, the paper presents a brief exemplar of Filipino nursological analysis through the local concept of pakikiramdam (relational attunement), then it maps the possibilities, challenges, and caveats of advancing Narsolohiyang Pilipino.

This article discusses a paper by Martin Lipscomb, published in 2012. Martin's paper asks whether the findings in qualitative nursing research can provide evidence robust enough to inform nursing practice. Martin appraises various arguments designed to establish that qualitative studies do provide a basis for action, and concludes that they fail. I provide a commentary on the paper, and then look at more recent attempts to vindicate the use value of qualitative research. I argue that the question 'What requirements must qualitative studies meet if they are to serve as a basis for future action?' has only one persuasive answer. Unfortunately, the relevant requirements are not met by the majority of qualitative studies in nursing.

In this article, I discuss the implications of the neoliberal transformations on healthcare that are justified under the aegis of economic efficiency. Drawing on the work of German critical philosopher Axel Honneth, I present a critical-social and philosophical perspective that reinterprets these transformations as pathological consequences with devastating impacts on how we understand what human beings and social relations are. I argue that in a neoliberal context, nursing care becomes a form of reification defined as 'forgetfulness of recognition' of the human identity of the patient which contradicts the assumed ethical foundations of nursing. The article provides a detailed account on how neoliberal rationality that governs nursing performance promotes an objective and a 'neutral stance' of care that neglects emotional engagement and deals with the patient as an object or a thing which violates all dimensions of patient recognition. I also emphasize that neoliberalism must rather be understood as a specific form of governmentality that goes beyond mere economization and structures a specific way of understanding people in the healthcare context. Neoliberal rationality, as conceptualized in this article, not only considers human being as homo economicus, where decisions are based on economic ideals, but also neutralizes relationships and disseminates an 'objective' and purely scientific stance in caring interactions. This leads to the detachment of nurses and reification of patients. Thus, nursing care is reduced to an instrumental rationality that focuses on technical care, which diminishes any possibility for nurses to engage with patients and understand their unique phenomenological world necessary for coping and recognition. Finally, nurses are urged to raise their voices against neoliberal rationality that programs their ideas of what 'good care' is. A critical emancipatory mode of thinking provides an opportunity to challenge neoliberal rationality and revitalize nursing agency to resist the devastating transformations taking place in health care.

Nurses often play crucial roles on teams involved in providing care to infants and families in the context of child protection services, making them well-placed to research topics concerning these groups. Developed by North American legal scholar Martha Fineman in 2008, a contemporary macro-legal-political theory with potential to inform studies related to the nexus between healthcare and law is 'vulnerability theory.' Conceiving vulnerability as a universal, inevitable, and enduring aspect of the human condition, it contends that the onus is on the State to respond to universal vulnerability by ensuring institutions and structures do not confer unfair advantage or disadvantage. When access to rights is particularly difficult, a 'targeted group approach' should be considered as well as consideration of the notion that responses to vulnerability have the potential to increase vulnerability. This paper outlines the background of vulnerability theory, explaining its key tenets and criticisms, before considering how it might be useful to inform studies focused on infants in out of home care.