This chapter focuses on the Scientific Revolution, a period of time roughly from the 16th to 17th centuries in which radical new developments and changes regarding the study of the natural world occurred as central to understand what science is. The development and establishment of what is usually taken to be the characteristic methodology of science has always been regarded as constitutive of the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution developed a “realist” view of mathematics in which it is believed that mathematical analysis reveals deeper truths about the world. During the Scientific Revolution, the naturalistic elements of magic were separated from other aspects of magic. In the most general terms, the Scientific Revolution introduced a completely different worldview, replacing a medieval/Renaissance teleological world with a modern mechanistic world. The Scientific Revolution is a complex phenomenon in itself and part of a larger complex social change in the West.

This chapter focuses on introductory arguments about the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) student and graduate’s clinical scholarship, a future practice-oriented nursing epistemology. It explores a model of scientific inquiry and stewardship for the nursing discipline through the development of a body of practice-oriented nursing knowledge to improve health. There is a very strong case to be made that the “good science” evolving from the DNP programs where nursing epistemology and practice knowledge development is valued is indeed being conducted within the framework of a Mode 2 knowledge production paradigm. Finally, there is an operational concern for how practice knowledge is made formal within the academy before it is then further synthesized, reduced, and disseminated in journal format and oral presentation. Practice knowledge generation only needs rigor, proper mentoring, an inquiring mind, and some creativity.

Objectives have been used for decades in nursing education to set the stage for what is expected of students and to guide faculty in planning teaching and assessment. However, nursing education is evolving and the timeworn practices used to write objectives must evolve as well. This chapter focuses on how to write broad behavioral objectives to support learning in a constructivist, learner-centered online environment to guide teaching and learning that are in step with today’s innovations in education and that follow the call for radical transformation in nursing education. Objectives focused on the desired learning outcomes or intended behavior changes, termed performance. The psychomotor domain is the skills domain in the narrow sense of the word, in that this domain provides a means of identifying outcomes that involve fine, manual, and gross motor movements.

The creation of the online course in the learning management system (LMS) requires a certain comfort with technology, but more important, consideration of interface design, or the computer-user interface with the goal of making the interface as user-friendly or intuitive as possible. Success in this endeavor depends on understanding the relationship of the syllabus and organization of the LMS. This chapter focuses on expanding on that information to create consistent navigation in the LMS week after week, taking advantage of the efficiencies available in most LMSs, and basic interface design principles. Interface design is also referred to as the computer-user interface. The LMS design should be intuitive and easily navigated so that students can focus on learning and not spend an undue amount of time locating information. In a constructivist, learner-centered teaching paradigm, the lecture as the primary means of teaching has fallen out of favor, especially when teaching online.

This chapter provides a guide to conducting a life history from conceptualization to dissemination. Life history is used to explain an individual’s understanding of social events, movements, and political causes, that is, how individual members of groups or institutions see certain events and how they experience and interpret those events. As it is unlikely that nurses will be conducting traditional fieldwork to gather life histories because of the extensive periods of time involved, the chapter describes the process for collecting focused life histories by researchers whose only purpose is to document the story of the participant and not to frame this life history within a broader ethnography. It considers life history as a sociocultural methodology and leave oral history on historical research and life review to the one on clinical literature.

The purpose of the life histories is to introduce doctoral students to a methodology that is not usually covered in qualitative texts but that has applicability to the study of nursing phenomena. Three doctoral students conducted abbreviated life history interviews as a class assignment for their course on qualitative methods. Their interviews were part of a larger study by de Chesnay on successfully overcoming adversity, for which she obtained institutional review board (IRB) approval from the university. The first publication was a set of life histories with successful African American adults. The second publication was a series of life histories conducted by master’s degree students on clinical topics related to their interests. These topics were surviving colostomy surgery, multiple sclerosis, and bereavement. The third publication involved undergraduate nursing students who interviewed affluent adolescents about their experiences of substance abuse.

This chapter presents an overview of the state of the art ethnographies conducted by nurses and highlights a few works by the early generation. An extensive search of the literature was conducted to identify ethnographies completed by nurses. Nursing knowledge was a common thread throughout the literature reviewed. The literature review revealed the progress nursing is making in recognizing this gap and attempting to close it. Nursing knowledge is essential in patient care. Using the ethnographic method of inquiry, nurses have been able to identify areas of need both in knowledge and practice and make recommendations for enhanced practice. Caring and patient advocacy were other common themes in the literature. Caring is the essence of nursing and consequently should be incorporated in nursing research. The common purpose of the ethnographic studies reviewed was to explain or understand a phenomenon to increase nursing knowledge.

This chapter provides a brief overview of the research followed by a discussion of what issues the author considered in preparing a qualitative design, the challenges faced while conducting the study, and lessons learned from the process. Comparative politics and public policy are the two areas the researcher chose to focus on health policy. The process of seeking government assistance for a problem and obtaining a response is called the policy process. This process is composed of agenda setting, government response, program/policy implementation, and evaluation. Facilitators and barriers for implementing needle exchanges (NEXs) were identified and were available to policy makers to consider in planning and implementing NEX programs. The value of a shared philosophy about drug use, drug users, and implementation strategies was clearly important as an implementation strategy to the policy community.