Many nursing professional are accepting theories in nursing especially the interrelationship between theory of nursing and theory of practice separated from one common theory known as practicing nursing theory. Many thoughtful nurses whether they are professional or not are currently convinced that they need but have another structured body of science to guide them in the career in practicing nursing. The clamor is wildly growing to persuade researchers to engage in deeper or critical thinking in order to produce theoretical theories that are testable and hold promise of contributing towards the development and the structure of nursing.
However, there are questions that are asked concerning the nursing phenomena and about the most promising approach to develop significant nursing theories. The question concerning the nursing phenomenon can be answered by the delineating the foremost objective of nursing, that is the central focus for education, research and practice. And question two is about the promising approach for nursing theories that will depend on the alternative of the approach to the generation of new knowledge as it seems everything is changing due to technological advancement.
One of the foremost requirements of theorists is to identify the vital nature of a particular system of knowledge of which to make an inquiry. Recognition or acknowledgment of the intertwined relationships between and among disciplines will never relieve theorists of this requirement. For nursing also, investigators have to identify the central or main focus practice and delineate the phenomena which theorists may want to develop.
However, it must be born in mind nursing is caring for the people as the central focus, people who need close attention and help them deal with ill healthy. Nursing, itself as a profession encompasses various intervention modalities which are all intend to enhance and promote each sick or health seeking person. Nurses have been commissioned to encourage and stimulate ill health people to avoid disease the disability, this is more so, a psychotically therapy or physiological healing procedure.
The professional of healing also encompasses compensating the inadequacies of a person sustaining and supporting the person throughout the period of sickness or dependency caused by disease or dysfunction. This requires the profession of nursing to posses wide ranging knowledge about man’s reaction, measure of value, dynamical interaction which may mean the lows and highs of interaction between the patient and the nurse. This generally a conception of man to care for and get cared for.
Empirical inquiry enables people to generate new ideas and rely on them rather than copying from the outside “commitment to advancement of knowledge through empirical enquiry or adequacy promotes knowledge to gain more knowledge. ” New discovery especially the nursing theories that are under scrutiny and the new emerging ones can be confirmed or rejected by empirical evidence viewed in the context of logic and relevancy to all existing beliefs within the knowledge system of nursing at any given time.
Critical and creative thinking about empirical data is engaged and this leads to a testable hypothesizes which in return will give true and workable theories. Empirical research reveals inadequacies in any assumptions or explanations held by the nursing fraternity, thereby calling for a serious study and investigation of theories. Moreover empirical research arouses need for more knowledge by investigators or researchers or develops theoretical formulation that may be used for a continuous improvement of nursing practice.