[The process of historical research in nursing]

The purpose of this article is to describe the use of historical research in nursing. The information of the chronology of nursing knowledge is considered to be important for the development of the discipline's knowledge for the future. This paper describes the process of historical research by a study of the home visits of the public health nurses in Finland 1944-1972. The first step in historical research is to identify the problem area and the purpose of the study. The second phase included data collection from primary and secondary sources. The third phase includes external and internal criticism of the data. This criticism occurs simultaneously with data collection. The last phase means synthesis and writing the research report. At the end of this article, some critical points in historical research are outlined.