Nursing Theory Today: What, Why, How

Theory is a key component in nursing scholarship. A fundamental aim of nursing scholarship is to generate understanding of processes and human experiences of health. The combined practices of nursing science and the profession can be uniquely beneficial to theory development. However, traditional views of science in nursing may dampen the synergy between these two practices for developing nursing theories. In this article, I present particular ideas about nursing theory today, including some traditions that we may need to transcend, drawing from current thinking in philosophy of science and nursing science.