Nursing knowledge and practice

Antonio Arribas Cachá

Abstract

The fact that nursing is currently a scientific discipline, subject to the academic rigor of university education to obtain a degree and the possibility of access to the highest postgraduate university qualifications (masters and doctorate), are known, recognized and regulated issues in our country.

This consideration of nursing as a scientific discipline entails the existence of a series of responsibilities and requirements that must be fulfilled by the profession, which must always be taken into account in order to maintain its current status.

Among these requirements is the need to have a body of nursing knowledge that supports the development of our professional practice. This body of knowledge encompasses the specific knowledge of our discipline, endowed with the best possible scientific evidence at all times.

The achievement of this requirement inexorably requires the development of one of the four basic functions defined in our profession, which is none other than the research function.

The development of rigorous work and studies, planned and developed following the scientific method, which allow us to provide clear, concrete and reliable results and conclusions on nursing care, constitutes the basic resource available to nursing professionals to provide the necessary evidence on the validity of the knowledge of our discipline that make up our own body of knowledge.

Research not only allows the generation of the necessary knowledge for the elaboration and establishment of this body of nursing knowledge, but also allows us to respond to the necessary and essential work of revision and updating of the existing contents, which allows them to maintain their validity, as well as the incorporation of new knowledge that swells the existing ones for their growth and development.

It must be taken into account that knowledge is a dynamic, changing element, in continuous evolution and adaptation to reality, new circumstances and available resources. This fact makes it possible to understand how the body of knowledge of any discipline also needs to be in continuous revision, updating and growth so that the profession can have an increasingly greater competency framework and social recognition in line with its work.

In this sense, it seems appropriate to recall the close relationship between the framework of competencies, autonomy and responsibility recognized to a profession, and its own body of knowledge that supports them.

The competencies recognized to a profession will depend on various aspects, among which the first basic and essential element is the existence of proven knowledge that guarantees the effectiveness and safety of its professionals in the execution of their work. This means that the framework of competences recognized to a profession is directly related to the development of its own body of knowledge.

But if nursing is a scientific discipline that must generate the necessary knowledge to support its existence, it is also a practical profession, not a theoretical profession, which means that its ultimate goal is the provision of services to the community, in the specific case of nursing, the attention to the professional care needs of the population to improve their health.

This means that nursing does not only need to generate and update knowledge and theoretical developments, but also to implement them in daily clinical practice, for the benefit of the health of the population. It must apply the developments in practice, in order to fulfill the final objective it has established.

It is easy to understand at this time the intimate relationship that is established between theoretical and practical developments, between the growth of nursing as a discipline and as a profession, so that one without the other makes no sense:

The generation of theoretical knowledge does not serve its purpose if it is not applied in nursing practice.
Nursing practice cannot be executed without being based on contrasted knowledge.

Therefore, if research is the key to meeting the need to generate this proven knowledge, the controlled socialization of this knowledge among professionals through conferences, congresses, seminars or scientific journals, in which scientific committees are responsible for reviewing and guaranteeing the contents disseminated, will make it possible to incorporate them into programs, protocols and/or procedures and apply them in nursing practice.

In this task of contributing to the controlled diffusion of the own knowledge generated by nursing among its professionals is where the scientific journal "Nursing Knowledge" is located, which today begins its public journey.

It aims to be a tool available to nursing professionals that is widely used, and in which they can expose and disseminate, with the necessary guarantees and endorsements, the knowledge generated for the benefit of the profession and the health of the population to which we owe.

Antonio Arribas Cachá.