The Art and Science of Nursing
In defining nursing, there was a longstanding argument as to whether nursing is science or an art. Well, most of the literature in the last five decades or so indicates that nursing has both attributes. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is the mother of nursing and in her memoir; she stated that nursing is an art. She noted that nursing requires some great deal of dedication that she further likened it to the Fine Arts. However, in the modern definition of art, which is the non-scientific branch of learning which imprints a skill attainable by practice, study or through observation (Ackley and Ladwig, 2014).
Influence on Current Practice
Despite the growth and expansion in nursing as a profession and as an academic discipline, much of its core attributes have not changed. In its 150 years, the practice has still demanded the professional and dedicated care towards sick people in need of comfort, welfare, care, relief from suffering and pain. In accomplishing these core functions of nursing, the personnel need an understanding of both the science and the art of nursing. Art, as stated earlier, enables a non-scientific learning approach to all persons aspiring in taking up nursing professionally. In the current practice, any good nurse has to have empathy, compassion and the general human instinct in provision of care.
Today, hospital staff, just like the other players in the human-based services sector, faces a lot of public scrutiny and the only way a nurse may avoid this is by mastering the fact that nursing is a human service makes it only ideal for those of us with the ability required in offering help necessary for each patient (Lehne, 2013). All these actions embodied in nursing exemplify an aesthetic knowledge, which can only best align with art. In the populist dyad of art and science, reflections of the patterns applicable in the discipline become necessary in deliberating the best way in categorizing nursing. In art, knowing falls is a cognitive process. Knowing follows four distinct patterns – experimental (empirical), ethical, personal, and aesthetic attributes. All these attributes demand more art than science. In the current teaching and practice of nursing, the patterns are of great influence. In many careers, ethics represent an important trait that very professional ought to have. A lot of what defines science is the aspect of research and research in itself defines the particular theories and methods applicable in a discipline. In nursing there are various efforts providing an epistemological prominence that safeguards the status of nursing as a discipline.
The reason behind this viewpoint bases on the fact that the sort of care required and the skill set ought to be conducted in a systematic approach. The explanations and methodologies obligatory in science and their relevant and particular expression as per their own theories, models are all present in the current practice of nursing. Right from the origin of nursing, during the …
