- What made the works of Nightingale, Henderson, Levine and Hall be categorized as Pre-paradigmatic?
Nightingale, Henderson, Levine and Hall were not from the same era but what made their works be categorized as pre-paradigmatic made me look up and review their works.
According to McEwan and Wills (2018), paradigm is an organizing framework that contains concepts, theories, assumptions, beliefs, values, and principles that form the way a discipline interprets the subject matter with which it is concerned. It describes work to be done and frames an orientation within which the work will be accomplished. For me, pre-paradigmatic simply means that there is generality of concepts on the theories. So, looking closer into the works of Nightingale, Henderson, Levine and Hall, they have a universal or general concept. Though there might be other theorists with works that we may consider general too, so we will come back to the question, why the works of these specific theorists fall under pre-paradigmatic? My answer is from my own opinion and observation. If we will come back to Newman’s categorization, she included Nightingale as a representative theorist under the particulate-deterministic category (McEwan and Wills, 2018 pg. 133). What I think why Nightingale and the 3 other theorists’ works fall under the pre-paradigmatic category is because their works can not be categorized in just one paradigm, they overlap. Maybe we can also include Nightingale’s work under unitary-transformative category, and this might be the same with the 3 other theorists’ works.
It is still a little vague for me to truly answer the question, but I do hope with the exchange of ideas on the discussion forum, we will be able to come up with a strong answer to the above question.
2. Do we really need theory in the practice of nursing?
Theories might be very difficult or complex to understand. Nursing theorists then and now came up with theories not just because they are curious, observant and they want to improve nursing processes, it is also because nursing practice is continuously evolving and many thought processes of nurses need transformation to adapt to the existing circumstances of the profession.
To answer the question, do we really need theory in the practice of nursing, my answer is yes. We need to know the processes, understand every part of nursing to understand nursing profession as a whole. Theories, for me, are the guiding principles that promote a systematic way to assess, evaluate and come up with a conclusion or explanation to the problems we already encountered, and we see everyday in our practice. It will help us evaluate and come up with specific solutions or plan and focus on specific goals for a better nursing care.
