A NEW PARADIGM FOR NURSING - THE POTENTIAL OF REALISM

Realism has been the dominant approach in the philosophy of science fo r the last 20 years. Realist philosophy has also been widely employed across a range of social sciences. Unfortunately, these powerful intel lectual currents have not reached the shores of nursing which appears trapped in a time-warped debate about 'qualitative' (constructivist) a nd 'quantitative' (positivist) approaches. This paper argues that both positivism and constructionism are seriously flawed as philosophies o f social and natural science. This is in marked contrast with realism which is a philosophy of both the natural and social sciences. I there fore propose that realism should be adopted as a radically different n ew paradigm for a unified biopsychosocial nursing.