Epistemic Injustice in Nursing Knowledge Production: A Three-Pillar Framework for Recognition, Redistribution, and...

Area of Science:

• Nursing Philosophy
• Decolonial Studies
• Global Health Ethics

Background:

• Western-centric knowledge paradigms in nursing create epistemic injustice by excluding non-Western ways of knowing.
• Existing critical scholarship lacks an operational framework for epistemic justice in nursing institutions.
• Decolonizing nursing knowledge requires interrogating colonial foundations, not just diversifying frameworks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine how Western-centric knowledge paradigms in nursing contribute to epistemic injustice.
• To develop an operational framework for epistemic justice in nursing education, research, and practice.
• To provide concrete outputs: a three-pillar framework (Recognition, Redistribution, Representation), measurable indicators, and an audit tool.

Main Methods:

• Critical interpretive synthesis of literature from nursing philosophy, decolonial studies, critical pedagogy, and global health ethics.
• Theoretical sampling across major academic databases (CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science) from 1990-2025.
• Single-author interpretive synthesis for theory generation, reaching saturation for framework-relevant constructs.

Main Results:

• A three-pillar framework for epistemic justice in nursing: Recognition, Redistribution, and Representation.
• Measurable operational indicators for each pillar, including citation equity, syllabus diversity, and leadership representation.
• A six-question decision audit tool for institutional self-assessment of epistemic justice.

Conclusions:

• Achieving epistemic justice in nursing requires structural change in defining legitimate nursing knowledge.
• The proposed framework aims to support collaborative development with Global South, Indigenous, and racialized nursing scholars.
• Decolonizing nursing necessitates a fundamental interrogation of dominant, colonial epistemological foundations.