This issue is really a difficult one for me.  On one hand, nursing has been
SO derivative in the past and so willing to be led by other more "mature",
more high status disciplines that when nurse scholars stay within the
discipline of nursing to understand nursing issues, I find it refreshing.  I
hold that we need to understand nursing per se as well as nursing from the
perspective of philosophy, nursing from the perspective of sociology,
nursing from the perspective of medicine, etc. I know of course that the
term "nursing per se" will touch some sore spots but guess we can all
predict what those will be and what the cries of outrage will sound like.  I
wonder if some have delved back into the literature of the 1960's, 1970's,
'80's and even worse, '90's where very well respected and highly placed
nurse scholars claimed that nursing was the APPLICATION of knowledge from
other disciplines?

Now for the other hand...Donna has made such a beautiful point about the
poverty of education in nursing education!  And it's getting worse by the
day.  For me nursing is a human science and thus really grounded in the
humanities, in fact, for me, nursing IS one of the humanities as much as it
is one of the sciences.

Some of this discussion has led me to wonder if anyone has done a cursory or
serious search of the literature to see how and how much other disciplines
like philosophy, etc. have drawn on nursing thought?   Or are we to assert,
as did some of our predecessors in the last couple of decades that nursing
knowledge and thought can only be classed as the application of the
knowledge and thought drawn from other disciplines?

I think if someone were to take the time to examine a significant number of
papers in JNS, it could easily be shown that the preponderance of papers
draw heavily from other disciplines.  Is it necessary that every single
nursing paper be noticeably grounded in some discipline other than nursing?

Everytime I risk contributing to this forum, I am reminded that I don't have
credentials as a scholar of philosophy...and then I remember that my
willingness to risk is based on credentials as a nursing scholar.  So, once
again, I am offering some thoughts, even though they may be, as a friend of
mine says, "half-baked ideas".

Savina Schoenhofer
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