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Feminism: A path to clinical knowledge development
Debra Jackson
Professorial Fellow, School of Nursing, Family and Community Health, University of Western Sydney, NSW
Abstract
Nurses are under increasing pressure to defend the efficacy, value and cost benefits of professional nursing care. Now more than ever, there is a need for nurses to undertake quality clinical research, through which practice may be shaped and guided.
Feminist theory can provide a lens through which nurses may explore clinical issues. It also provides a framework by which socially constructed differences, such as gender and culture, may be incorporated into the design of clinical research projects. Because feminism is an openly political and transformative process, feminist concepts are suitable for use where the aim of the research is to catalyse practice change.
This paper explores the use of feminism as a theoretical framework for nursing research.
Keywords
feminism, nursing, research, clinical research
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