The primary goal of undergraduate nursing programs is to prepare students for nursing practice. Achievement of this goal may be hindered by reliance on the scientific method in nursing education. Nursing practice often requires the ability to make judgments in situations of ambiguity without the benefit of objective data. The ability to rapidly "read" a situation and respond appropriately is critical to safe nursing care. This requires education in the intuitive way of knowing. Intuitive development may be impeded when students are taught to rely on the rational, scientific way of knowing. The end result may be that students are unprepared to meet the demands of nursing practice.
Research on intuition in nursing has focused on nursing practice. To date, no study has explored intuition in nursing education.
This study provides data on intuition in undergraduate nursing curricula. A descriptive research study was done on faculty members of the National League for Nursing (NLN). An intuition survey was developed and pilot tested on 10 undergraduate nursing faculty. The survey was sent to a random sample of 676 NLN faculty members nationally. A 51% $(N = 330)$ response rate was achieved. The survey included: (a) intuition attitudes, (b) attitudes toward including intuition in the undergraduate nursing curriculum, (c) intuition in the current curricula, (d) practices related to development and teaching of intuition, and (e) preparation for teaching about intuition.
The major findings are: (1) Faculty expressed attitudes of value for intuition. (2) Faculty expressed attitudes that support the importance and appropriateness of including intuition but had concerns about including intuition. (3) Intuition is currently included in the undergraduate nursing curriculum on a limited bases. (4) Faculty use many strategies to develop their own intuition and to help students develop intuition. The majority of faculty rate the strategies as effective. (5) A limited number of respondents had preparation to teach about intuition and the majority expressed interest in learning more about intuition. (6) Program type, years in nursing education, and highest degree in nursing made a difference on intuition attitudes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-4407 |
| Date | 01 January 1998 |
| Creators | Epeneter, Beverly Jean |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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