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shift in theory construction in which the grand conceptual models are not debated, but transcended. We believe that, as a scientific community, nursing has moved to the point of abandoning the conceptual models of nursing theorists as forming the science base of the discipline" (McCloskey, Bulechek, and Tripp-Reimer 1995, 95). It is not just at the level of nursing theory that this act of clearance is seen as unsettling. Practicing nurses implementing NIC at one of four test bed sites had several complaints. They stated that learning to use NIC together with the new computer system in which it was embedded was like going to a foreign country where you had to speak the language; to make matters worse, you had to go to a new country every day. More prosaically, they said that they felt they were going from being experts to novices.
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The argument was made that there has been no comparative work done in the past. "The discipline of nursing has not yet constructed a cohesive body of scientific knowledge" (Tripp-Reimer et al. 1996, 2). There is a complexity here, however, that often arises in connection with the strategy of clearance. One wants to be able to say that nurses now do something that is valuable and adaptable to scientific principles. At the same time, they maintain that nurses have not yet (until the development of the classification system) been able to develop any nursing theory and thence any systematic, scientific improvement in practice. |
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This difficulty is a general problem when new classification schemes are introduced. New schemes effectively invalidate much previous knowledge by creating new sets of categories. Yet, they seek to draw on the authority of the outdated knowledge while simultaneously supplanting it. |
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This same article, concerning the dimensional structure of nursing interventions, tackles this problem directly. Tripp-Reimer argues that there must be a cycle of forgetting in the development of the new classification scheme. The article begins with a quote from Chung Tzu: |
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The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish. When the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. |
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The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. |
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The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. |
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Seek those who have forgotten the words. (Tripp-Reimer et al. 1996, 2) |
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The authors argue here that the traditional grand theories had a "certain limited utility beyond their historical importance" in that they |
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