Citation

Ramsay S. Nurs. Philos. 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/nup.12368

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Concussions are a significant public health problem worldwide. This brain injury is problematic in the paediatric population for a variety of reasons; however, the enquiry into these problems has been mainly through the biomedical perspective. This approach has impacted nursing knowledge and practice of children and youth with a concussion, primarily since other perspectives are viewed as not being objective. In this manuscript, I draw on Thomas Kuhn's view of objectivity to evaluate the biomedical perspective of concussion. I utilize current research and clinical examples to illustrate the advantages and drawbacks of this perspective for nursing. From this discussion, I propose an alternative perspective to capture the complexity of paediatric concussions for nursing, a systems perspective. Although I argue for an alternative perspective to approach paediatric concussions for nursing, I maintain that the biomedical perspective can be incorporated as one part of nursing knowledge and practice for paediatric concussion.

Language: en

Keywords

Kuhn; objectivity; paediatric concussion; systems perspective