Vaartio-Rajalin, Heli

RN, Associate professor in gerontological care

Åbo Akademi University, Health Sciences, Finland

When professional nursing care is discussed outside the nursing community, terms like compassion, caring relationship, support and alleviation are expressed and sometimes integrated with concepts of clinical skills and ethics. However, the nursing science seems to be a far more ambiguous term.

Nursing is a highly specialized profession. Nurses use their critical thinking and decision-making skills to integrate objective data with subjective experience of a patient’s/groups´/communities´ needs and plan evidence-based nursing interventions to prevent, treat or alleviate health problems, functional disabilities and poor quality of life. This demanding task is exemplified in the nursing process.

Contemporary nursing science, then, has focus on exploration of relationships between the central concepts (the human, the environment, health, and nursing care) and rigorous development, implementation and evaluation of models and interventions for the different parts of the nursing process. These are indispensable for continuous developement of nursing practice, nursing teaching, nursing research as well for inter-professional collaboration.