Knowing–Doing–Valuing as Systems of Cocreations: A Germinal Theory on Ethical Caring

Ethics is one of the major considerations in conducting nursing research. Nurses are engaged in clinical research practice; however, not much is known about the influence of ethics on their practice. A hermeneutic phenomenological research design was used in the determination of thematic structures describing ethical caring through in-depth interviews, field notes, and aesthetic expressions. Ten clinical research nurses saturated the data. Results showed that as clinical research nurses became immersed in a novel nursing praxis, they formed positive and negative views about clinical research, human subjects, and ethical caring. These affected their sensitivity towards the radical changes and also their adaptation to the adversities that they encountered within the milieu. The process that they underwent of rendering ethical care towards human subjects was explicated in the triphasic concepts of knowing–doing–valuing as systems of cocreations; the germinal theory developed, an integral component of unifying the dichotomy of research and ethical caring.