Suomalainen hoitotiedekeskustelu

The purpose of this study is to describe the Finnish argumentation in nursing and caring science from the seventies to the beginning of the nineties [1968-1991], and the argumentation of nursing and caring science during the last five years. The focus of this research is to describe and analyse what nursing, nursing science and caring science mean from the Finnish perspective, for example, the problems and the definition of the discipline. This study is theoretical. The literature review comes from the articles of seven Finnish experts of nursing and caring science. The experts in this study are an emerita professor in nursing, five professors in nursing science, and a professor in caring science. The literature is analysed using concepts, ideas and theories of these experts. This research report describes seven views of Finnish nursing and caring science. In these seven views there are four levels for dealing with the problems of nursing and caring science. The problem areas are described, analysed and reported through those four levels. The terminology in Finnish nursing and caring science created during the first decades varies alot. There are feelings that the terminology is really problematic. One part of the focus of this study is to open this terminology. In the seventies the new terminology of nursing and caring was differentiated from the terminology of nursing meaning only a nurse's work in order to make the terminology more exact. In the eighties, the broader nursing terms became the terminology for nursing and caring science. This happened slowly over ten years. Finnish nursing and caring science has been very much the same for decades. It has been related to formal health care, stressing the independent tradition of nursing, it is not related to the tradition of "caritas", and the American tradition has been very strong, but the European tradition has also influenced. The philosophical differences are very few: The ontological base of Finnish nursing and caring science is dualistic, epistemologically it is a combination of empiric and rationalistic views, the research interests are in the human being and in caring, and methodological pluralism is accepted as a rule. At the end of the eighties, attempts were made for a newer view of science. In the nineties, phenomenological philosophy and the ontological problem of the human being invite the paradigm which controlled nursing and caring science for decades to the edge of a new view in science.