Pragmatic Children’s Nursing
For the past 30 years or so nurses have relied upon a philosophy of care called family centred care. As an idea this philosophy has been very useful in promoting the need for children to receive nursing care which is different from the nursing care delivered to adults1.
The problem is that repeated research studies have failed to show that nurses actually do family centred care2,3. Nor is there evidence that neither children, nor their families want a “family” focus to nursing care 4,5. In modern times meeting the need of all family members when many families are complex and often fractured seems to be a difficult if not impossible task1. Perhaps the main reason for moving away from family centred care is that it does not allow nurses to focus on children, as it demands the needs of adults are considered and all too often when adults’ needs are the focus of care the child is forgotten6.
Pragmatic Children’s Nursing is a new theory designed for children. It is the first attempt to design a nursing theory just for children, not to adapt an adult theory. As the name suggest it uses the concepts and ideas of North American Pragmatists to suggest that there is not one size fits all way to do children’s nursing, but many ways that suit a time ,place and cultural spaces.
This website is here to allow a space for people to discuss the ideas, and practices described in and suggested by Pragmatic Children’s Nursing 1
Dr Duncan C Randall
Duncan has been a children’s nurse for more than 25 years . He has taught children’s nursing for more than 20 years and published in many peer reviewed journals. His research includes evaluation of the Spectrum of Children’s Palliative Care Needs ( Shaw et al 2015), work on play for children living with life limiting/threatening conditions ( Jasem et al 2018) and work on safeguarding when researching with children ( Randall 2015
Duncan is an editor on the 3rd edition of Glasper and Richardson’s A Textbook of Children and Young Peoples Nursing ( in press 2020)contributing 4 chapters he has authored or co authored and influencing the restructuring of the new edition.
Next Steps…
Please do explore this site, and get in touch… perhaps start with a outline of the theory