In 1971 after a presentation on concept development I heard myself in a
chatty response to the audience declare my unique theory of nursing. It
was based in constructs that I had developed and conceptualized.
Previously I had viewed these constructs only as distinct entities. My
synthesis of them surprised me. This was the first time I conveyed them
as my why, how, and what of nursing. This synthesis may have emerged as
a sequence to my reexamination and reflection on each of these
constructs in preparation for this 1971 presentation.[1] Now it became
evident that their sequential evolvement had a logic that had come from
my being without my awareness.
Since 1971 I have planned to reflect on these synthetic constructs to
better understand how they relate to one another complementarily. Why?
To further the development of these constructs and to state them as
propositions. Statements of propositions are movement toward nursing
theory. Theory is considered here as a conceptualized vision teased out
of my knowing from my nursing experience.
{96}
Like Elie Wiesel, the novelist and literary artist, I write to better
understand and to attest to happenings. This chapter is the fruit of
this endeavor.
The first term, "comfort," was developed as a construct in 1967. After
recording and exploring my clinical experiential data, a conceptualized
response emerged to my question: "Why, as a nurse, am I in the clinical
health-nursing situation?" The second term, "clinical," was developed as
a construct in 1968. It was a conceptualized response to a dialectical
process within myself. I asked, "What is clinical?" I answered, "I am a
clinician." I asked, "As a nurse clinician what do I do; what is the
condition of my being in the nursing situation?" I answered, "This
described would equate to clinical." Consequently I compared and
contrasted two nursing experiences similarly labeled to properly grasp
the principle of "clinical" for conceptualization. The third term or
phrase, "all-at-once," arose intuitively within me as a construct in
1969 and was partially conceptualized. It arose after mulling over other
nurses' published clinical data and asking, "What can you tell me of the
clinical nursing situation?" "What do you perceive as the nature of
nursing?" Therese G. Muller's, Ruth Gilbert's and my thought on the
nursing situation merged into a view of these as multifariously loaded
with all levels of incomparable data, the "all-at-once."
Incommensurables relate to the nature of nursing and its concerns. How
can one study unrelated appearances? Muller often used an historical
approach while Gilbert emphasized individualization. In humanistic
nursing practice theory a descriptive, intersubjective, phenomenological
approach is proposed for greater understanding and attestation of the
events and process of the nursing situation. The construction of
"comfort, clinical, and all-at-once" I would now label as conceptualized
phenomenologically. I view them as relevant phenomena to any nurse and
this nurse-in-her-nursing-world.