Reaction paper analysis and perspectives

¶ … Nursing Theory as a Guide to Practice," assembles the concept of nursing theory retrospectively with a glimpse on some of the issues the author faced during the first years of his own career. Furthermore, Cody captures the context of the domain within its years of development up to the 2000's, more specifically, 2003. He emphasized on the relevancy of theorizing nursing practice and indeed, the article is constructed to make people aware in regards to what nursing theory is and is not and the necessity to keep it not merely afloat, but constantly updated and consistent. Cody sought to demystify the grounds on which nursing theory had been perceived and why it was important for nurses to rely on such studies by defending his own perspective that, in fact, theory is what guides practice as opposed to theory arising from practice.

Cody's article is set as a response to Jacqueline Fawcett's questions in regards to nursing theory, a discussion the latter had opened previously with Dr. Marilyn Parker. Such questions as whether or not theory arises from practice can be very demanding for they need to be understood in relation to a series of issues. Indeed, one such question may appear puzzling at first, similar to asking "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" While I admit that the latter question may be subjected to a humourous connotation, I must say that the issue of nursing theory is as much philosophical and serious as the question of "the chicken or the egg." Cody (2003) disregarded any of the ideas, however creative, that were "neither grounded in a philosophy of nursing nor intended specifically to guide the work that is the specialized mission of nursing" (p. 226), as nursing theories. In this respect, he chose to exemplify by using his experience from when he had worked as a nurse in the 70's and 80's. He came to believe that none of the repetitive technical operations that nurses had to execute on a regular basis, nor their developing efficiency in how they communicated and dealt with people, had any relevance with "developing, generating, or inventing theory." (Cody, 2003, p. 226) However, if I ponder on some of the concepts surrounding nursing and what it is about, I might find myself contradicting Cody here. If we think of nursing as a system, and we must, because a system is dependent on its factors as a structure, and nursing does require presence of individual(s), a work environment, state of health and caring, all of the factors here, do thus depend on one another to prove effective. If "nursing, as a discipline, not only encompasses knowledge, but how that knowledge is translated into practice" (Moore, 1990, p. 825), then, what Cody and his fellow colleagues had experimented with during that time of their career, is one form or another of theory, although not solid enough to be considered a system of theories. and, considering that nursing was remotely perceived a discipline in itself in the 70's and 80's, and that ideas on whether or not nursing as knowledge needed to be studied separate from medical knowledge were strong pro and cons, such practices as mentioned by Cody, moreover, the synthesizing of such practices as knowledge, can be related to what eventually have become theories of nursing. In stating that "few [of those activities] were deeply rooted in any philosophy (…), none were published or widely disseminated" (p. 226), Cody (2003) seems to imply that whatever work involving nursing that does not receive academic attention, cannot yield any theory, but theorizing is not merely the work of specialists, often it is those specialists who formulate the theory on premises of practice.

One of the issues that Cody raised in regards to how nurses were being taught to "nurse" is based on a series of contexts involving the health system in America. The reason nursing theory was found so difficult to enact had to do with the fact that "in the United States, nursing practice is carried out in a context of for-profit healthcare" (Cody, 2003, p. 227), and as such, the values of nursing practices were degrading. Nowadays we can pride on a much appreciative recognition of nursing theory with "models" being implemented regularly and indeed I can think of the Magis model of care carried out in Chicago in the first decade of the 2000's. This initiative was possible because of "several nursing theories along with information from the Institute of Family Centered Care" (Jasovsky et al., 2010, "Abstract") and led to such results as the change of nursing practice habits that, although proved sometimes uncomfortable for nurses, it meant proficient practicality (Jasovsky et al., 2010, p. 32); the results were deemed even more satisfactory when related to patients feedback, 90% of these having willed to further recommend the services of the hospital (Jasovsky et al., 2010, p. 35-36).

Moreover, Cody believed that nurses found it difficult to adopt or even try to understand nursing theory due to the duplicated effort the latter assumed. All of a sudden, it was not just about executing technically, but a second -- intellectual effort was required from nurses (Cody, 2003, p. 228). Indeed, we must think of the fact that, in this line of work, many are inclined to act automatically and practical, finding it difficult to theorize on "doing tasks." That even academics were unable to understand nursing theory and the fact that some of his own colleagues lacked the resources to defend claims of "non-sense" and "garbage," disappointed Cody even more so because it proved nursing theory had still obstacles to face.

Cody (2003) advocated for how nursing theory "can be shown to enhance health and quality of life" (p. 230), but that it requires, and I do agree with him here, certified assistance and a persevering study of interpreting tasks in correlation with nursing theory.

Conclusion