Week 3 (Class 1) - Becoming a Nurse: Patterns of Knowing

Question 1

knowledge and knowing? What is the difference between

Answer 1

Knowledge: Knowing that is expressed in a way that can be communicated with others

• Objective
• Subjective

Knowing: The way of perceiving and understanding the self and the world

• A process
• Fluid
• Internal to the “knower”
• Empirics
• Aesthetics
• Personal Knowledge
• Ethics
• Emancipation
• Unknowing

Question 2

What are the types of knowledge?

Answer 2

Objective: Can be measured or observed (signs)

• Logically constructed
• Scientific in nature
• Unbiased
• Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions

Subjective: Patients feelings (symptoms)

• Shaped through personal experience
• Affected by how the person sees the experience
• Reflected by speaker’s views
• Not tangible

Question 3

What is ontology?

Answer 3

The study of the way of being, concerned with what is true and concerned with the relational quality of being present with another

• Expressed in various ways (i.e. connection, caring attitudes, poetry, art, literature, etc.)
• Nature of reality
• Central to the art of nursing and philosophy of the nursing program

Question 4

What is nursing epistemology?

Answer 4

“The study of the origins of nursing knowledge, its structure and methods, the patterns of knowing of its members, and the criteria for validating its knowledge claims.”
(Schultz & Meleis, 1988, p.21)
- Relationship between a person and object, and the reality
- Ways in which knowledge is developed
- Involved methods of uncovering truth

Question 5

What is Carper’s Patterns of Knowing in Nursing?

Answer 5

Way of understanding knowing
- Carper’s patterns of knowing serve as a type of a classification system for where different types of nursing knowledge can and do come from

Question 6

What are Carper’s 4 ways of knowing?

Answer 6

1) Empirical
2) Aesthetic
3) Personal Knowledge
4) Ethics

• understanding these 4 ways increases awareness of the complexity and diversity of nursing knowledge
• each way is necessary to achieve mastery of nursing
• important on their own but needed together

Question 7

What is the first way of knowing? Explain:

Answer 7

Empirical:
- The scientific form of knowing, or 
“the science of nursing”
- Rarely used until 1950s
- Grounded in science
- Factual
- Aimed at developing abstract, theoretical explanations
- Scientific competence
- Based on assumption that what is known is accessible through physical senses
- Traced back to Nightingale
- Objective reality - expressed in theories or facts
- Sources: Research and theory

Question 8

What is the second way knowing? Explain:

Answer 8

Aesthetic:

• Comes from the Greek, “I perceive, I feel, I sense…”
• Knowing that comes from the individual in that moment
• Awareness of the immediate situation in the moment

“ The art of nursing involves the active transformation of the patient’s behavior into a perception of what is significant in it– that is, what need is being expressed by the behavior.” (Carper, 1978, p. 17)

• Appreciation of the situation, move beyond the surface to connect with the PT
• Expressed through actions, conduct, attitude, interactions and formally
• Empathy is an important aspect

Question 9

What is the third way of knowing? Explain:

Answer 9

Personal Knowing:

• “Therapeutic use of self” - knowledge gained from thought alone
• Way which nurses view themselves and the client
• Concerns inner experience of becoming whole and developing self knowing through interactions with others
• Authenticity is important when providing care
• Personal biases, strengths, weaknesses, feelings, values, attitudes are important to reconcile inner conflicts to provide proper care - if not resolved can create distortion and inhibit professional growth

One does not know about the self; one strives simply to know the self”
(Carper, 1978, p. 18)

“Self is a dynamic concept, ever deepening as we expand and broaden our relationships with others. The Self is created in relation to others.”
(Hall and Allan, 1994, p. 112)

Question 10

What is the fourth way of knowing? Explain:

Answer 10

Ethical Knowing:

• Moral code of nursing
• Matters of obligation and what needs to be done, what is good, what is right, and what is responsible
• Guides how nurses morally behave
• Helps clarify conflicting values and exploring alternatives
• Ethical codes and principles are expressions of knowledges - insight about possible choices (sound, responsible, just)

Question 11

What is emancipatory knowing?

Answer 11

The “praxis of nursing”

• Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied or realized - May refer to engaging, applying, exercising, realizing or practicing ideas
• I.E. Theory to Practice

Question 12

What is emancipatory knowing?

Answer 12

The “praxis of nursing”

• Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied or realized - May refer to engaging, applying, exercising, realizing or practicing ideas
• I.E. Theory to Practice

“The aptitude to acknowledge social and political injustice or inequity, to realize that things could be different, and to piece together complex elements of experience and context to change a situation as it is to a situation that improves people’s lives” (Snyder, 2014, p.65).
- Individual and collective level

Question 13

What is emancipatory knowing reflected in?

Answer 13

• Political action
• Addressing SJ

Important in ethical nursing to a sustainable healthcare system
- Issues arising in your specific community

Question 14

What is the concept of unknowing?

Answer 14

Patricia Munhol

• Nursing theorist who coined this phrase
• State of mind where there is an openness to other possibilities, interpretations, and perceptions
• Learn what the PT is experiencing
• Allows you to understand the PT
• Leads to empathy and understanding of PT perspective