Revolution of Nursing Science in the Next Decade

Abstract

Knowing a history of nursing science allows nurses to understand the journey of nursing theorists and scientists in developing the nursing science. Since the era of Florence Nightingale in the mid-18th century, the nursing theories and nursing research were published to the public, particularly scientific community. During late 18th and 19th century, there were many interesting questions among these debates that have not been answer yet, such as is it a nursing science or science of nursing? and is it a pure science or applied science? Even though the scientific community acknowledges that nursing is known as a science, many scholars remain to discuss the definition and category of nursing science. Along the history of nursing knowledge development, nursing scholars faced many challenges concerning the difficulty to develop the required content for nursing practices, to be an excellent discipline in the developing science base, to prepare nurse researchers, and to disseminate research results to the community and to the public (Hinshaw, 1989). Nowadays nursing science is entering into the postmodern era and it will be continued development in the next decade. Even if nurses do not recognise that nursing knowledge is currently in crisis, looking for the future of nursing science throughout the principle of Kuhn’s paradigm shift might provide valuable direction for nurse. Therefore, this paper aims to explain Kuhn’s revolutionary theory and its principle. Moreover, the influence of Kuhn’s revolution theory on the revolution of nursing science that will be present in this paper.