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Te Puawai
One could argue that there’s room for a traditional review within these discursive constraints. A
savvy author could arrange a benign expression that would fit into the various sub-sections of the
methodology and quality analysis description. This is a “narrative” review; quality appraisal can
consist of “evaluating whether the material presented a cogent, supported argument for the themes
it presents;” the discursive post-methods discussion can tolerate the header “results.”
However, there are two reasons to reject this conformity. Firstly, there isn’t room, amongst these
headings, to express the things that matter. I present as an example, a review I have written for a
prominent journal of sociology a few years ago.[25] I drew together therein many threads from a
range of theoretical and historical perspectives to describe a nascent sub-discipline of medical
sociology. I presented both a history and a platform: including classical texts, and mad ones. Mad
they might have been, but the latter garnered significant popular interest, and despite (or perhaps
because of) their heretics, played an important role in shaping discussions, as other scholars
scuttled to respond, and set the story right. These little bits of sociological lunacy wouldn’t pass
quality analysis, yet explain the direction the discussion
has ended up taking. It’s simultaneously the heterogeneity and the similarities of the articles I bring
together that create the base for my argument. When dialectic is the method, a “summary table”
will capture neither content nor direction.
Secondly, conforming to the structured abstract kowtows to an unjustified technology of control. As
Avis wrote “New academic identities are being created in which values such as academic
independence, intellectual curiosity and expert judgement are being replaced by industriousness,
rulefollowing, compliance and self-imposed endorsement of ‘the hegemonic position of
managers’”.[23, p297]
That reviews are systematic is perhaps but one symptom in a more generalised attempt of the
nursing journal to be submissive itself to what it sees as the scientific, or more precisely, the
professional imperative. It is by producing and using research, wrote Fawcett, that “nursing will be
able to declare its independence”.[26 p39]b
But there’s also that dogged need in the nurses’ search for professionalization for them to withdraw
from the Doctor Nurse game, that game where “nurse is to be bold, have initiative, and be
responsible for making significant recommendations, while at the same time ... appear[ing] passive
... so as to make her recommendations appear to be initiated by the physician”.[2] The
professionalization of nursing has compelled nursing to consider how professional knowledge is
constructed, and in the profession from whose grip they wish to escape, this is via EBP.
Bonnell[27] has argued that nursing will be marginalized if it rejects the empirical, quantitative
research, regardless of the legitimacy of their counter-argument.
For nursing to establish itself as a credible field it must have the means and techniques to imagine
itself into existence, and then to represent, manifest and valorise itself in a consistent manner to its
own members and to other fields. If EBP is our only tool, we have at stake here the survival of the
field. We are at a place where we establish the credibility of our thoughts on the basis of our
method, rather than of our arguments.
We would do well to seek inspiration from the publications of our medical counterparts. The Lancet
devotes a sub-section to “Articles that advance or illuminate,” encouraging debate and opinion via
© Te Puawai

College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc
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