HOLISM AND NURSING: AN ANALYSIS OF THE PRAGMATIC CONSEQUENCES OF A THEORETICAL CONCEPT FOR A HELPING PROFESSION.
Contributors: New York University.
Published: 1983
Number of pages: 307
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The purpose of this study was to analyze the various meanings of the concept of holism, its adoption into the profession of nursing, and the relationship of holism to nursing practice, research, and theory.

The concept of holism was surveyed as it appears in Western philosophy and in selected scientific disciplines: history and social science, biology, psychology, and ecology. In brief, the philosophical issues surrounding the concept of holism were found to include such concerns as the nature of reality; the character of organic wholes, such as man; the adequacy of the scientific, or physico-chemical method to treat of such wholes; various polarized positions, including reductionism and antireductionism, the arguments for and against the concept of emergence, and methodological individualism and methodological holism; the nature of the relationship between the whole and its parts; the possibility that totalitarianism may be inherent in the extension of holistic or collectivistic ideas in the social sciences; and the problem of formulating adequate methods of inquiry for the study of wholes.

The nursing literature from 1900 to the present was approached, using a sociology of knowledge methodology, to analyze the circumstances surrounding the adoption and modification of holistic concepts in the nursing profession. Holism was found to be associated with the elevation of nursing specialties, such as public health nursing and mental nursing; the impetus for higher education in nursing; specific movements in nursing, such as the "whole child" impetus in 1930s and the integrated curriculum impetus in nursing education in the 1940s; and, in general, the process of increasing professionalization in nursing in all historical periods. The discussion is divided into treatments of twenty-year periods. The specific applications of holistic thought during each period are discussed in detail, and related to the socio-historical trends of the period.

The consequences of concepts of holism for nursing practice, research, and theory are examined. The implications of the concept of holism as a practice prescription, a conceptual base for research, and as a philosophical issue are presented and explored. The study concludes with an examination of holism's moral value and its part in establishing and extending nursing's territorial domain as influencing factors in nursing's disposition of the concept.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-03, Section: B, page: 0826.

Thesis (PH.D.)--NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 1983.

School code: 0146.