[Nursing science in German--current status and future prospects]

Establishing nursing science at German universities has become more and more consolidated. At the beginning of this establishment there was an evident backlog especially compared to angloamerican and scandinavian countries. Today-- 1997--more than 40 nursing science courses exist at German high schools and universities. Despite this dynamic development, it is clear that nursing science and research are still not firmly established in the German university system. Defining an independent nursing science area is one of the primary tasks that should be accomplished simultaneously with the ongoing establishment of science courses, hereby, taking into account its dialectic relationship with closely related sciences. Moreover, the different nursing science courses that have been established until now, appear to have different profiles and are partly located in different university and high school departments. The influences of these different departments on the establishment of nursing science as an independent discipline are at least as unpredictable as is the question of how nursing science could be integrated within the system of sciences as well as within the high schools and universities. Taking the above mentioned considerations into account the following reflections have been stated.