Knowledge for re-forming nursing's future: standpoint makes a difference

We draw on our recent research that has convinced us of the importance of nurses' participating in re-forming health care on their own terms. The empirical evidence we present here shows how "boardroom knowledge" of health care is constructed with different priorities than is the knowledge of direct care on which nurses' safe, efficient, and effective work relies. The 2 forms of knowledge are not the same. Nurses' knowledge is routinely transposed through a procrustean process of "working up" direct care nurses' knowledge into new informational forms without attention to the importance of the full range of what nurses know from their unique standpoint.