Korean J Child Health Nurs.  2001 Jan;7(1):85-95.

Nursing Knowledge/Power and Practice in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

• Lee EJ
• Hong KJ

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to reveal what influences the divergent methodological researches have brought the nursing practice in during the past 3 decades. The nursing record sheets ie, the nursing discourses were analyzed to know the knowledges that were recorded, accepted and communicated in nursing practice at pediatric intensive care units, and unclosed the philosophical and methodological position of that knowledges. The texts were 13 sheets, 3 kinds of nursing record(7 24hours flow charts, 4 nursing information record sheets and 2 transfer record sheets) used at 4 hospitals. The unit of analysis was 'word'. First, all words of the sheets were listed up, clustered into categories based on their contents. And then, the larger conceptual themes were drawn to elucidate the effect of the knowledge/power and the philosophical and methodological position of that knowledges. To enhanced the validity of the analysis, the data were analyzed by two researchers. The 'words' were classified into 3 categories; 'general information', 'assessment' and 'intervention'. The conceptual themes of the texts were 'the gaze for quantification and objectification' and 'technical/assimilated caring'. This themes reflected the logic positivistic and biomedical view that had dominated at clinical practice. Nursing has endeavored to resist the logic- positivistic knowledge/power and to established the nursing knowledge/power based on multiple philosophies and methodologies, especially phenomenological-interpretative. But the results of this study revealed that such efforts in nursing theory and research couldn't influenced the knowledge of practice. Logic positivism was yet so strong and the biomedical model yet dominated in the clinical practice. It identified that the borrowed theory and the knowledge from the received view gave nursing the power. But they were modalities that reinforced the dominant, medical power. Nursing has investigate the other positions (feminism, Habermas' critical social theory and Foucault's discourse theory). This positions suggest different assumptions but share the common concepts; equality, emancipation and freedom. The important point is how make these concepts the practical for nursing knowledge/ power in practice. We must recognize that the praxis at clinical setting take place at the field unlike theoretical praxis. The change of clinical practice is the social, economic and political change.

MeSH Terms

Freedom
Intensive Care Units*
Intensive Care Units, Pediatric
Critical Care*
Logic
Nursing Records
Nursing Theory
Nursing*
Philosophy
Child Health