DEVELOPMENT OF NURSING THEORY

Stages in the Development of Nursing Theory Nursing theory and philosophy has evolved from an era in which nursing was seen as a skill set rather than a profession and was mainly guided by medical authority in a hospital, for example (McEwen & Wills, 2018), than by separate education of the profession. It was no small feat for nursing to be what it is now, it took a better part of a century for its theory development and separation, in which many nursing professionals have vigorously contributed to its evolution. Such events made up the different stages of theory development in nursing. Essentially, there are six stages of theory development in nursing. I will discuss three, which are the subjective, procedural and constructed knowledge stages. In the subjective stage of the development of nursing theory, the nurse is the primary focus. The attitude towards theory begins to change and philosophers and theorists begin to push for separation from the borrowed philosophy from other disciplines, including the sciences and social sciences. Nursing began to be seen as a science where scholars began to focus on developing theories by and for nursing. This stage of theory development aided in propelling the nursing profession further in terms of viewing nursing as a separate entity from the previously conceived view of medical authority as seen in the silent knowledge and received knowledge stages of nursing theory development (McEwen & Wills, 2018