The Knowledge Crisis of Nursing

Abstract

In Norway and Denmark, the public healthcare is comprehensive, and nurses constitute a large and important part of these healthcare systems. To handle the increasing complex tasks as a nurse requires a broad range of knowledge. In resemblance to the medical profession, who aim to fight disease and maintain health, nursing is at the same time a practical and a theoretical discipline. The aim for nursing is to offer care for people who cannot care for themselves. An interpretation of human science using health- or natural science methods dominates the academic development of knowledge in nursing. In this article, we engage in a theoretical examination of knowledge within the context of nursing academia in Denmark and Norway, drawing comparisons between two prominent positions. The theoretical framework is built up from the tradition of praxeology and critical theory and used as the pervasive analytical lens. As a model to the interpretation of the two positions, we use argument analysis. The results indicate that the dominating clinical nursing science in Denmark and Norway has been a success when it comes to capacity building at hospitals within an academic research tradition similar to the tradition of the medical profession. However, this research primarily contributes with techniques and models, as it focuses on application oriented research and is eager to produce suggestions in and for practice. This is important research, but insufficient when it comes to producing theories on and about nursing practice as a scientific discipline. We argue that this lopsided academic development supports a crisis in knowledge, because it fails to provide nursing with a proper theoretical scientific base. This is needed if nursing should develop as a subject in the scientific university logic and is essential to enable professional reflexivity in order to meet the demands of contemporary nursing care.