Methodological challenges for nursing care research

Truisi, Martha Lucia Vásquez

doi:10.1590/S0104-07072010000400001

EDITORIAL

Professor at Nursing School of the Universidad del Valle, Cali-Colômbia. Coordinator of the Research Line: Sexuality, Procreation and Cultural Care

Currently, we can see that although there is great methodological pluralism in nursing care research, there are some challenges to be considered for the development and strengthening of the discipline's body of knowledge. Some of the methodological challenges for the discipline of nursing which were must face in order to continue to advance and deepen the study of the act of care are related to: first, the passage of disciplinary to inter and transdisciplinary studies. To this respect, we must approach the human being, not with a fragmented conception, but as a unit, as an integral being. To do so, it is necessary to keep in mind that care is a complex process in which different agents act within a socio-economic context in a particular historical moment. We could say that as such, the reality of care shows itself in a polyhedral form with contradictions in a space-time context. In the same fashion, we know there is interdependence upon other disciplines and that the instruments and forms to construct theories have been generated not only by the nursing discipline, but are the combined patrimony of other disciplines. This reality represents a challenge because the investigation would demand a less reductionist, fragmented approach more interconnected with other disciplines in a complex methodological effort - as the different disciplines many times involve different approaches and forms of thinking about the phenomenon.

Another challenge is related to learning and developing research proposals with a routine practice with the essentially transformational sense of improving the quality of daily health services care. We know that there is a gap between the theory taught in institutions of formally educating human talent and the practice that is exercised in all phases of care. This rupture is also evident among the results obtained based on primary research carried out by nurses and the few changes permitted to daily care¹. As such, it is necessary that nurses are actively involved and participate in the investigative processes that permit them to identify practical problems, seeking to solve them through such processes. A third challenge is that nurses learn to review the experiences of their practice in order to systematize them based on this knowledge creation process. In this sense, it refers to going beyond the classification of information, looking to experiences as historical processes, complex processes in which different actors intervene in a determined social and economic context, in the institutional moment of which we are part. To systematize signifies then to understand why this process is developing in such a form, to comprehend and to interpret which is happening, based on an ordering and a reconstruction of what happened in that process.

The fourth challenge may be to work with methods which favor the integration and complementary nature of the qualitative and quantitative paradigms. The defense of the methodological complementarism is proclaimed by Morin² in his work, "The seven complex lessons for education in the future", in which he explains that the complexity of the facts or phenomenon demand the presence of distinct but competing visions, which offer a richness of nuances which may escape each of them in their isolation.

The fifth challenge consists of transcending the local and particularities of care, enriching it with the global and the collective. Comparative or intercultural studies are an excellent exercise in making this transition. Many investigative articles which examine the phenomenon of care in a community or a particular sub-culture are generally found. The invitation is so that these efforts do not remain merely in the location and specifics of the subculture approached. With these cross-cultural studies, as they are commonly called, identify similarities and differences in the way we approach care over different cultures. Through this type of research, we may discover universal aspects which help us to better understand human behavior with respect to human care.

All these challenges may be rigorous exercises in analysis, interpretation, and integration of results which seek to give greater efficiency to investigations developed towards care and thus, to contribute significantly towards knowledge generation which permits the creation and maintenance of a solid scientific basis but also the development of an autonomous profession. Nursing research must develop methodological procedures which facilitate that professional elements contribute to free them from the routine of always doing the same things the same way.

It is necessary to question what we do in trying to consider the act of nursing care, without diminishing current theoretical foundations, but rather perfecting them.

The challenges outlined here attempt to highlight some methodological lights and shadows of Nursing care research. The lights will be brighter each day, for we have the human talent concerned with seeking the truth and transmitting it into care for people with the ultimate objective: to contribute to bettering quality of life within society.

REFERENCES

1. Loayza Enríquez BK. Buscando evidencias en la ciencia y el arte del cuidado de enfermería: retos y desafíos. Evidentia [online]. 2010 Abr-Jun [acceso 2010 Jul 29]; 7(30). Disponible en: http://www.index-f.com/evidentia/n30/ev1530.php
2. Morin E. Los siete saberes necesarios a la educación del futuro. Paris (FR): Organización para las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (UNESCO); 1999.