Nursing Diagnosis in Perspective: Response to a Critique

Summary As noted above, I have attempted to respond to Shamansky and Yanni's critique of nursing diagnosis. This has included an identification of some critical assumptions that underlie their work, the contexting of their arguments in the history of scientific discovery, and a listing of various misconceptions and distortions concerning nursing diagnosis. I have concluded that the authors' basic premise was a desire to eliminate rather than ameliorate nursing diagnosis. The authors had an unstated preconception of a preferred model of conceptualizing nursing, which they did not directly state as their preconception. They systematically listed real inadequacies of nursing diagnosis efforts as an argument for abandonment. They reflected limited understanding of or information about the nursing diagnosis literature. They tended occasionally to overstate their case. I believe that my dissatisfactions with nursing diagnosis efforts are more informed, more complex, and more numerous than theirs including such quandaries as taxonomic principles and research units of analysis. However, my responses to these problems are proactive rather than reactive, committed to amelioration rather than elimination. While I feel that the authors have provided a salutory service in delineating their concerns, I look forward to other critical reviews that might provide the intuitive insights to address the next steps in the evolutionary development of nursing diagnosis.