Nursing as a Subset of Medicine
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Chan, Safani and Winkle (2004) define medicine as the science associated with the prevention, cure and/or alleviation of diseases and injuries. On the other hand, Stanhope and Lancaster (2001) define nursing as the work of caring for the sick or injured or infirm, noting that in some cases, this caring factor can and must be applied even when no medical care is needed. In other words, the science of medicine may not be required for certain people but nursing care still is. Given this difference, the question can be asked as to whether medicine and nursing are really part and parcel of the same field of medicine. In other words, is nursing truly a subset of medicine? The purpose of this paper is to answer this question. The paper will show that, based on the pertinent literature, it is not valid to claim that nursing is a subset of medicine. Before examining the literature, it is important to understand the significance associated with determining whether nursing is a subset of medicine. Several factors make this important but the most important of these is that if nursing is a subset of medicine, then it is reasonable to utilize non-nursing medical personnel to fulfill nurses' roles. This is currently a very important issue in professional nursing. For example, Tomlinson (2004) reports that Florida International University has developed a program to train foreign physicians to become registered nurses as a means of resolving the nursing s
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ir practice. First, it is noted that nursing is an autonomous scientific profession with a separate knowledge base and with many strategies and skills that are quite distinct from the medical profession and practice. Second, it is pointed out that nursing is not about giving medical treatment in the easy cases, but rather giving care in all medical cases, two very different things. Third, it is noted that:
Of course, nurses cannot practice medicine without completing medical school, but neither could physicians practice nursing without completing nursing school. We would be as justified in saying that someone with "medical experience" might be able to "handle," in some rudimentary way, the nursing for a majority of cases, but at the risk of killing a significant minority. But that would be highly questionable and needlessly divisive, since we recognize that neither profession is a junior version of the other.
The Center For Nurse Advocacy (2003) points out that another false idea associated with the notion that nursing is a subset of medicine is that nurses do not question doctors and that if they do, they are put into their places. However, the fact of the matter is that in real life, physicians' plans are indeed questioned by
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Approximate Word count = 1617
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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