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While American nursing attempts to deal with the multitude of dilemmas that have been plaguing it for decades, many developing countries look to the USA for a nursing model to emulate, and then become lost in this confusion of its nursing profession. However, these countries continue to reach out and seek consultants with educational and practical experience in nursing in the USA, as well as in other developed countries. A paradigm is proposed for use by educators and consultants to help delineate the major issues a developing country has to confront in establishing a stable nursing service. This paradigm is explicated by applying it to the situation in Kuwait, a Fourth World country with many social paradoxes (e.g., rich in economic resources but poor in human resources). Four major paradoxes in nursing are identified by using the proposed paradigm. They are: 1 educational needs vs. educational reality; 2 locals vs. cosmopolitans; 3 role congruency vs. role incongruency; and finally 4 medical vs. nursing conceptual models. Although these paradoxes became manifest through work done by the author in Kuwait, any international health care professional will quickly realize that the prardoxes are not unique to Kuwait but have parallels in many other countries which are at different stages of development.
Afaf Ibrahim Meleis (Thu,) studied this question.