Holistic concepts and the professionalization of public health nursing

The sociology of knowledge provided the conceptual and methodologic basis for this study of the relationship between the philosophic concept of holism and the professionalization of public health nursing. Set in the context of the history of ideas, the discussion examines the various meanings of holism and the circumstances surrounding their adoption, modification, and use in public health nursing. The nursing literature from the late 1800s to the 1980s was analyzed to explicate the pragmatic consequences of holism for public health nursing, and to examine holism's moral value and its part in establishing and extending public health nursing's professional domain.