Abstract: The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of empiricism and its contribution to nursing epistemology. It describes the key philosophical assumptions and discusses the major tenets of this school of thought. Finally, it highlights the role of empiricism to the development of nursing epistemology and presents the benefits and limitations of the research, as chosen from this philosophical orientation.
Methods: This is an opinion article that discuses the authors’ opinion regarding the importance of empiricism to nursing practice and how it contributed to nursing epistemology.
Results: In nursing, the development of nursing knowledge through empiricism approach is deemed appropriate because the nature of the nursing practice requires predictions and explanations; empiricism has the capacity for explanation, which is necessary for clinical practice. Through empiricism, the human phenomena related to normal and abnormal physiological or psychological processes can be objectively identified and observed.
Conclusions: The nursing knowledge yielded through an empirical approach is considered fit for generalization based on an explanation of similar phenomena. Since the role of values as claimed by this approach tends to be ‘value free’, the nursing knowledge yielded from empiricism is considered valid, reliable, and objective. This makes the nursing practice evidence based.
Keywords: philosophy, empiricism, nurses, knowledge.
Title: An Overview of Empiricism and Its Contribution to Nursing Epistemology
Author: Dr. Yusra S M Al Nasiri
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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