Surgical Conscience: A Concept Analysis for Perioperative Nurses

A concept analysis was performed on surgical conscience in perioperative nursing using the Penrod and Hupcey principle-based method. The analysis included framing surgical conscience according to the epistemological, pragmatic, linguistic, and logical principles and showed that surgical conscience falls into several domains, including nursing, surgery, anesthesiology, surgical technology, and interventional radiology. Although some perioperative nurses consider surgical conscience a fundamental principle in the OR, there is limited published literature on how surgical conscience is introduced, learned, improved, or measured. The literature search for this concept analysis did not produce a published operationalization of the concept. Therefore, this concept analysis provides a comprehensive definition of surgical conscience to guide the future research that is needed to reinforce surgical conscience and prevent conceptual dogma-a situation in which attributes of a concept lack the support of additional investigation but are still used and reinforced over time.