Transdisciplinarity and nursing education: Expanding nursing’s professional identity and potential

Abstract

Nursing, as both a discipline and profession, has a history of struggling to define its unique identity and body of knowledge. As well, nurses work in a healthcare system that, despite ongoing change, continues to privilege biomedical technology and physician-driven services. However, global health crises, issues in addressing the social determinants of health, advances in medical science and technology, and healthcare reform compel a renewed conceptualization of nursing’s professional identity and purpose. If nursing were to embrace an expanded range of transdisciplinary knowledge, nurses could contribute to society’s health, in the broadest sense of the term, in new and unique ways. Developing transdisciplinarity in nursing work and education has been difficult and, for some nurses, threatening, even though the idea of expanded and transcendent knowledge is a potentially fruitful one for nursing.This chapter reviews the history of nursing’s conceptualizations of its knowledge and identity, considers the contemporary forces that necessitate a re-imagining of nursing’s current collective professional identity, and explores the ways in which transdisciplinarity in nursing professional education might allow nursing to respond effectively and creatively to contemporary health issues and to re-imagine its own identity and purpose into the future.