[Clinical research methods in the nursing discipline framework].

Abstract

Within the nursing discipline, the research helps or should help to develop and assess the theories related to the relevant phenomena. A professional discipline such as ours determines the relevant phenomena through its sphere of activity and the priorities of the society in general. With time, the disciplines develop a preference in the way of thinking about their discipline. At that point, there is no singular approach to the development of knowledge inside the nursing discipline, and no consensus either on the way of carrying out nursing research, whether it is applied or not. From time immemorial, the logical and systematic chain of reasoning coupled with the minute observation, the reflection and the intuition have built up the processes essential to the understanding of the human natural phenomena. Thus, the nursing research was mainly influenced by the two prevailing approaches (quantitative and qualitative) both focused on the experience, but using different strategies to get in touch with reality. Recently, the triangulation of the research elements seems more frequent, whether it is the combination of theories, of methods or of researchers of different disciplines with different perspectives. Each approach has its own methods and criteria to collect and analyse the data, then to interpret and check the results. The reproduction and the confirmation of this knowledge through additional and critical research are essential if we want this knowledge to be recognized by this discipline.