Social Theory and Nursing

What is the value of social theory to nursing? What are the implications of overlooking or excluding the social for nursing knowledge and practice? These are some of the critical questions debated in this timely and provocative new book, which aims to tease out the tensions, contradictions and synergies between two starkly different intellectual paradigms.

In a series of authoritative and stimulating chapters, leading scholars consider how social theories have infiltrated nursing scholarship and research, what the benefits and drawbacks of this intellectual borrowing have been, and what the implications are for nursing knowledge, nurse education and nursing practice. The book draws on a wide range of perspectives – philosophical, theoretical, empirical and political – to offer a robust and wide-ranging critique and analysis of the questions that sociology raises for nursing and the implications of its use and misuse.

The book is essential reading for nursing researchers, academics and educators, as well as scholars and researchers in medical sociology, medicine and allied health.

Martin Lipscomb is Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Health & Society at the University of Worcester. He is widely published on social theory and research methodology in nursing, including two books, A Hospice in Change: Applied Social Realist Theory (Routledge, 2013) and Exploring Evidence-Based Practice: Debates and Challenges in Nursing (Routledge, 2015)