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Gifts of wise women: A reflection on enduring ideas in nursing that transcend time
1School of Nursing, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
Abstract:
In this essay, I propose there are enduring ideas in the works of nurse theorists from the 1960s and 1970s that were valuable not only in the past, but in nursing today as well as in possibly shaping the future of nursing knowledge development. I identify these as gift ideas and draw on the work of Wiedenbach for the gift of dignity in nursing philosophy, and the gifts of dialogue from Orlando, behavioral systems from Johnson, context from Roy, self-care from Orem, and finally the gift of nursing science as emergent in understanding life processes from Rogers. Although the core of nursing knowledge may be elusive, the gift ideas mentioned in this essay provide some guideposts in articulating and developing that core in the present as well as in the future.
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