Barbara Carper (1978) “Ways of Knowing”–there are four ways that nurse understand practice situations, and they are:
- Empirical 实验证据的 or scientific knowledge (includes evidence-based practice) –The Science of Nursing
- Knowledge from research and objective facts
- Knowledge is systematically organized into general laws and theories
- Evidenced-based practice (EBP)
- Personal knowledge or understanding how you would feel in the patient’s position
- Refers to the knowledge we have of ourselves and what we have seen and experience
- process of observation, reflection, and self-actualization
- Ethical knowledge or attitudes and understanding of moral decisions
- Helps one develop our own moral code
- Knowing what is right and wrong
- For nurses, our personal ethics is based on our obligation to protect and respect human life
- The “Code of Ethics for Nurses”
- Aesthetic knowledge or understanding the situation of the patient at the moment -The Art of Nursing
- The ability to create new understanding of a phenomenon
- ***Munhall (1993) added the fifth way of knowing: unknowing or understanding that the nurse cannot know everything about the patient and must place him- or herself in a position willing to learn from the patient’s perspective.
