University of Western Ontario
Nursing scholars have done much to build the knowledge of our discipline, but the future holds so many more opportunities. Perhaps our greatest challenge right now is for nurses to collectively ask, and answer for themselves: “ Where do we best take nursing from here?” And “How do we best proceed?” This presentation explored how building nursing knowledge might be informed by taking the time to critically consider how we are shaped by and might shape the larger context of health and health care, how best to go about co-constructing our discipline’s unique contribution to health and health care, and how we might pursue the possibilities contained therein for each and every one of us to use such understanding to continuously build nursing’s knowledge base.
Nursing, of all health disciplines, understands health as a process of mobilizing resource for everyday living (W.H.O., 1986). Nursing theorists and researchers have for years been building understanding of nursing as a science of life, focused on human potential, health, healing and wellness, understanding of health as conscious awareness, understanding of human relating as foundational to nursing, and understanding of the ethical and moral imperatives of caring. Perhaps our greatest challenge in building nursing knowledge is therefore all about how we understand, convey and synthesize the important scholarly work that nursing is doing, and indeed, that nurses have been doing for many years.
With a 21-year research program on relational health promotion as an example, this presentation illustrated how nurse scholars, clinicians, decision-makers and
policy-makers all contribute to building nursing knowledge. In this example, building nursing knowledge came about through mutual engagement in work that integrated research, policy, programs, practice and knowledge translation throughout sustained relational effort over a prolonged period of time. Partnering, interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, inter-agency and inter-sectoral collaboration, and professional reciprocity all helped to build nursing knowledge.
From the 2011 Autumn Communiqué
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