Leadership is a core curricular element of PhD programs in nursing. Our PhD faculty began a dialogue about being a leader, a steward of the discipline. We asked ourselves: (a) What expertise do PhD prepared nurse needs to begin to steward the discipline? (b) How do faculty engage PhD nursing students to assume responsibility for stewarding the discipline? Lastly, (c) How do we work with PhD nursing students to create their vision for how their work contributes to stewarding the discipline, from doctoral coursework throughout their career? We support the need for PhD graduates to have the skills to generate knowledge, conserve that which is important, and transform by disseminating new knowledge to a broad audience. Examples of nurses stewarding the discipline when pioneering research, critiquing traditional approaches to inquiry or trends in nursing practice, and developing policy, are highlighted along with examples of how PhD nursing students begin to steward the discipline.
Increasingly, nurses conduct scientific inquiry into complex health-care problems by collaborating on teams with researchers from other highly specialized fields. As cross-disciplinary research proliferates and becomes institutionalized globally, researchers will increasingly encounter the need to integrate their particular research perspectives within inquiries without sacrificing the potential contributions of their discipline-specific expertise. The work of the philosopher Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) offers the necessary philosophical grounding. Here, I defend a role for philosophy in cross-disciplinary research and present selected ideas in Lonergan's work. These include: (1) a dynamic, normative pattern that each inquirer operates uniquely also forms the common core, or unity, in knowing; (2) the possibility of cross-disciplinary knowledge development is dependent on each researcher's consciousness of her or his attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibleness; and (3) shifts in researchers' viewpoints, or horizons, facilitate their collaborative inquiry and their grasp of the unity in knowing. The desire to know, shared by team members, drives their inquiry. Lonergan's stance is consistent with nursing values because it respects, but does not unconditionally privilege, any researcher or discipline. Arguments support a claim that Lonergan's perspective is well suited to guide nurse researchers participating on cross-disciplinary health research teams.
Interdisciplinary research assumes that teams of highly specialized scientists develop new knowledge by bridging their respective horizons. Nurse educators preparing nursing doctoral students to conduct interdisciplinary research need insight into how members of interdisciplinary research teams experience knowledge horizons in these complex contexts. Based on the work of the philosopher Bernard Lonergan, this pilot study uses Transcendental Method for Research with Human Subjects to explore interdisciplinary researchers' experiences with and attitudes toward interdisciplinary research. Results reveal the overarching conceptual category of "engaged interdisciplinary inquiry" which includes six themes: (i) valuing interdisciplinary engagement; (ii) direct engagement; (iii) interior engagement; (iv) disengagement; (v) facilitated engagement and (vi) engaged researcher development. Results also suggest engagement depends on vigorous "back and forth", or dialogue, with self and others, and demonstrate the study method is fruitful for cognitive inquiry. This pilot supports expanded study to inform preparation for and conduct of interdisciplinary research involving nurses and raises important questions about how the trend toward interdisciplinary research affects nursing science.
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