Nursing in the Contemporary Interdisciplinary World

Nursing knowledge generation through research is a major sector of the discipline of nursing.1 Indeed, in the history of nursing discsipline, nursing research has been a major source of knowledge generation.1,2 At the beginning of nursing discipline, Nightingale carried out her research at the battlefield of the Crimean War using an epidemiological approach3 to generate the necessary nursing knowledge in taking care of the soldiers. Since then, nursing research has evolved throughout the past 150 years.4 Yet, most of nursing research was performed in nursing education and administration until the 1950s.4 Then, nursing research began its drastic advances during the last three decades.4 Now, nursing research is inclusive of a variety of research topics, methods, populations, collaborators, settings, and dissemination methods.4 With recent changes in funding priorities, team science through interdisciplinary approaches became a key in nursing research.5 The nursing academia even began to have team science as one criteria for promotion and tenure process as in medicine.6 With this trend, emerging young nursing scholars began to question on “nursing” knowledge. It is not new in PhD theory classes that PhD students, especially those from other disciplines, question about what is nursing perspective and what is the uniqueness of nursing theories. Sometimes, I feel like that we are going back to 1960s and 1970s when nursing scholars struggled to define what is nursing, what is nursing perspective, what is the uniqueness of nursing theories, why nursing theories are needed, and so on.2 However, this time, the questions are being asked because of a different reason to survive through the contemporary interdisciplinary world. Obviously, with the increasing number of interdisciplinary students and faculty members in nursing, nursing discipline has grown a lot with the subsequent richness of new ideas, perspectives, and methodologies (eg, informatics, genomics, data science, family systems, nursing-related health services research, and interdisciplinary aging studies).7 Indeed, methodologically and theoretically, nursing science has evolved drastically in recent years.7 Many nursing scholars are very optimistic about the increasing number of interdisciplinary scholars in nursing because they contribute to the development of new nursing knowledge by providing highly innovative and creative ideas and approaches, and by subsequently generating a large amount of research funding for nursing research.7 The supporters of interdisciplinary faculty members also claim that students actually benefit from the multidisciplinary learning environment by having a broad access to expertise that would otherwise be unavailable.7 On the contrary, others are concerned that the increase of interdisciplinary scholars would allow PhD students mainly mentored by scholars from other disciplines because interdisciplinary scholars have limitations in teaching nursing clinical classes at the undergraduate and/or master’s degree level programs.8 They are also concerned that, consequently, the next generation of nursing scholars might not be adequately raised to honor the backbone of nursing knowledge and nursing science (eg, nursing perspective, nursing theories, etc.). The third group emphasizes the necessity for continuous dialogue on how to strengthen nursing faculties and extend nursing science central to nursing discipline while pursuing a more evidence-based dialogue.9 This group views that the current dialogue is not supported by evidence. Maybe, the right question to ask now would not be whether interdisciplinary faculty can produce nursing-specific knowledge. Rather, it would be on how we could further generate and develop nursing knowledge within the current scientific contexts by building up the pipeline of nursing scholars and researchers and by bolstering nursing knowledge that is essential and central to nursing. I do not think there exists one right answer on this trend in nursing knowledge generation. In the current nursing world, it is essential to have a team science approach with interdisciplinary teams. Of course, it is obviously necessary to adopt perspectives, theories, and approaches from other disciplines. The world is changing, so nursing knowledge generation and development should adapt to the new changes. Yet, this might be also the right time to reflect on how we retain the identity of nursing discipline and the uniqueness of nursing perspective, nursing theories, and nursing science in generating new nursing knowledge in this contemporary interdisciplinary world. —Eun-Ok Im, PhD, MPH, RN, CNS, FAANEditor