Nurse Leaders as Stewards: The Beginning of Change

Abstract

In understanding fully persons’ moral predicaments, a core component of forming perceptual judgments, nurses may need to shift the epistemology of their practice from instrumental reasoning, or means-ends thinking, integrating a virtue-based practical reasoning. A bearing witness that achieves understanding of clients’ moral qualities is attained through the articulation of nurses’ self-identities within matrices, such as MacIntyre’s theory of virtue ethics and standards and codes of ethics. Moreover, nurse leaders who exercise stewardship could apply the concept of communities of inquiry to structure learning conditions by which nurses may engage in experiential learning. This leadership enhanced by the nurse steward’s phronetic knowledge, or practical wisdom, which guides understanding of how the clockwork of practical reasoning may evolve within such communities, is critical to nurses’ shift in reasoning. Nonetheless, nurse leaders need empirical evidence to comprehend how stewards’ accumulated moral insights may shape their character qualities, hence selection of values upon which to act in facilitating nurses’ self-expression.

Making explicit the development of PhD-prepared nurses to steward the discipline

“…This is more than research expertise in a subfield (p. 10). Murphy (2009) suggests nurse stewards can be change agents who encourage practical, virtues-based reasoning among practicing nurses.…”

The Exemplary Practice Life of the Nurse

“…In broadening the responsibility of stewardship to include all nurses, the exercise of stewardship actions becomes a transformative experience that assures transparency and accountability for conserving what is essential in the profession and beneficial to society. With a more inclusive view of stewardship, all nurses, as stewards of the profession, exercise their responsibility to preserve what is intrinsically good and valuable in the profession, while promoting what knowledge and practice benefits the health of society ( Murphy, 2009 ; Murphy & Roberts, 2008 ).…”

Building the Science of Nursing: Continuum from Past to Future

“…Nursing as a profession involves people who are educated within the discipline according to the nationally defined and monitored standards and regulations [12]. Toulmin [14] defined a profession as an "organized set of institutions, roles, and people whose business it is to apply or improve the procedures and techniques" of the discipline. In lieu of this definition, discipline and profession are inseparable.…”

“…The concepts of a discipline provide historical continuity [14] and are developed through a process of analysis and synthesis and refined through testing and evaluation [20]. It is through this process that the use of language is utilized to label and adequately define a phenomenon being described [13].…”