Importance Of Scholarship In Nursing

Introduction Scholarship can be defined as a process or stage of events that involves many factors in order to further a persons knowledge. Professor young defined it as “a process that explores and expands the body of knowledge that forms and advances the theory and practice of the discipline of nursing.” The most defining attribute of scholarship that is essential to the definition is knowledge. Knowledge is expanded upon by learning learning from various forms of education and disciplines. By integrating scholarship into the workplace patient care as well as safety can be increased. In this essay I will discuss how the combination of knowledge from liberal education, a variety of disciplines, and how different forms of thinking …show more content…
Each person on the medical team brings a different background and form of knowledge. These different forms of knowledge come together and create a well prepared and experienced health care team. One member of a health care team cannot fill the job of a different member, the knowledge to each position is unique. Although some knowledge will cross over from one position to another, but the depth of knowledge one member has cannot make up for the vast knowledge another member offers. For example a Nurse would be able to bring some knowledge of pharmacology, and some understanding of how a drug acts, side effects, and reason a patient is taking it. But what a Nurse knows about pharmacology cannot measure to what a Pharmacist knows and brings to the medical team. Even within nursing there are different forms of nurses that have been specialized to their discipline. However if two nurses have been specialized in the same area, based on their personal experience they will be able to bring different information and experience to the medical team. Barbara Carpenter’s article “The Fundamental Patterns of Knowing” backs this up, she claims there are four fundamental components to knowledge. This includes nursing science, nursing art, personal knowledge, and ethics or nursing. Two of these components should be a standard between all nurses, the science and ethics or nursing. But the art of …show more content…
They directly tie in with the multi-disciplinary medical team that a nurse is a part of, but the four ways of knowing also directly relate to the synthesis scholarship. The first way is empirics, which is defined as the nursing science. The nursing science is a standard knowledge that each and every nurse is required to know and is tested on. This knowledge is specific to the nursing practice and is gained through the education at a credited nursing university. This science follows concrete laws and some general flexible theories that are adapted per patient. Carpenter states empirics is, “ultimately aimed at developing abstract and theoretical explanations.” Empirics is fundamental knowledge that should precede a nurses cognitive state before taking action. Second is the esthetics of nursings, which is a nurses personal art. Anything that evokes a form of an emotional response is said to be considered art. Many times either on the patients side or on the nurses, emotion is felt and provoked from the work that is done. The art is not just a feeling of positive or negative emotions, but it is the style in which the nurse cares for their patients. As a nurse gains more experience they develop their own way of caring for specific patient needs. This is art style is completely unique to the nurse, it allows nurses to differentiate and individualize from other nurses.