Sociology and the nursing curriculum: a note of caution

One of the consequences of the expansion of degree, and diploma level Project 2000 courses in nursing, has been that students are now exposed to a significant amount of material from academic disciplines other than nursing, at a relatively advanced level. In this paper, one such discipline, sociology, is considered, and its relevance to the nursing curriculum is assessed. Following a consideration of two theoretical models of the relationship between academic disciplines and professional practice (the 'personal education' and 'semantic conjunction' models), it is argued that whilst the implicit rationale for the inclusion of sociology in the nursing curriculum can best be understood in relation to the latter, neither model offers a convincing reason as to why we should teach sociology to nurses. It is argued instead that the nature of sociological knowledge is inherently multi-paradigmatic, and hence reflexive, and so cannot in principle provide a knowledge base for action-oriented conduct such as nursing work.