Generation and utilization of knowledge in nursing

Abstract

There is currently a clear consensus in our society on the need to promote health research as a driving force for progress in the generation of proven knowledge to improve the efficiency of the work of professionals in achieving their objectives in terms of the health of the population.

Health research => Generates proven knowledge => Improves health.

Nursing, as a scientific health discipline, has the need to always use contrasted knowledge in the development of its work, and this fact is independent of the origin or discipline within which this knowledge has been developed.

This means that in practice, nursing professionals must handle, use and apply contrasted knowledge, their own and from other health disciplines, such as medicine, psychology, etc. This will allow them to improve the effectiveness and safety of their interventions for the benefit of the health of the population.

Nursing => Use of proven knowledge of its own and of other disciplines.

It is precisely this use of contrasted knowledge from different disciplines that will allow nursing to have a global vision of the person in the attention to their care needs, in coordination with other health professionals within the multidisciplinary health teams in which they carry out their work in an integrated manner.

It seems, therefore, clear that nursing professionals need to know, manage and use their own knowledge and that of other health disciplines, but this does not mean that the same is true when it comes to the generation of contrasted knowledge.

Each scientific discipline has its own "body of knowledge". This body of knowledge constitutes the sustenance, the essence and the main basis on which it must support the exercise of its professional development. It is defined as a basic and essential element, indispensable for its existence as a scientific discipline, on which it has the responsibility to revise, update and develop its contents. The greater the development of a scientific discipline's own body of knowledge, the greater the recognition and valuation of the discipline.

Scientific discipline => own body of knowledge.

Nursing can and must use knowledge from various disciplines, as we have mentioned above, but it must base its actions on the existence of its own knowledge that justifies the need for its current existence as a scientific health discipline.

This means that Nursing must focus its research work on the generation of knowledge specific to its discipline.

Nursing => Generation of its own contrasted knowledge.

This reflection, so basic in principle, is sometimes not sufficiently clear in the design of studies and works by nursing professionals, which can sometimes be the cause of a low recognition and impact of the studies carried out, despite the great effort and dedication of their authors.

Nursing should focus its studies on the field of care, establishing the focus of attention on the person, preventing the disease from becoming the axis of its developments:

Nursing diagnoses are individual (or family, group or community) responses to health problems or life processes. This means that one cannot standardize nursing diagnoses based on medical diagnoses or procedures (NANDA-I).

Studies related to the effective detection of care problems, the use of diagnostic indicators as assessment data, the description of vital care processes, the effectiveness of nursing interventions, the description of clinical care charts, the validation of nursing diagnoses or the effectiveness of indicators for monitoring the care process, are some examples of studies on which nursing should focus its attention and which would have the corresponding recognition and impact on society as health professionals responsible for their development.

Antonio Arribas Cachá