Disciplinary Thinking for the Scholarship of Nursing Research.

The author critiques the current American Association of Colleges of Nursing definition of nursing scholarship for its lack of emphasis on building discipline-specific knowledge. The author defines nursing scholarship as scholarly activities and formal investigations designed to generate, synthesize, translate, apply, and disseminate discipline-specific knowledge that advances nursing's societal commitments and responsibilities in promoting human health, human betterment, and wellbecoming. Nursing scholarship guided by disciplinary thinking consists of scholarship that is (a) informed by nursing philosophy; (b) framed within nursing's metaparadigm concepts; (c) situated within a nursing paradigm; (d) conceptualized within a nursing conceptual framework or nursing midrange theory; and (e) focused on, depending on one's paradigmatic and theoretical perspective, developing and testing concepts in nursing classification systems.

A Unitary Caring Theory Perspective of Adolescent and Young Adult Experiences of Resilience.

The major aim of this study was to understand the experience of resilience in adolescents and young adults within the context of a unitary caring science and to generate insights into ways to cultivate resilience in adolescents and young adults who have experienced adversity. Four major essences emerged and were synthesized into one statement. Maintaining hope and optimism for a promising future is acknowledging awareness and acceptance and experiencing connectedness while embracing power in the situation.

Heuristic Research in Nursing Science.

The purpose of this article is to reintroduce and describe the processes and phases of heuristic inquiry and to illustrate how the method can advance nursing science. Heuristic inquiry is a rigorous, systematic, phenomenologically orientated research method developed by Clark Moustakas for investigating, discovering, and understanding the nature and meaning of living experiences. Heuristic inquiry invites the inclusion of the researcher's autobiographical living of experience being investigated honoring the personal experiences of the phenomenon from self and each participant in the research study.

The Role of Metaphor in Hermeneutic Research.

The identification and interpretation of metaphor is useful to hermeneutic research. Metaphor is a way of conceiving one concept in terms of another and serves as a function of understanding. The author explores the rise of hermeneutics research and its relevance to nurse artsciencing.

The Uncertainty in Family Caregivers of Hospitalized Persons With a Stroke in Saudi Arabia: Unitary Caring Perspective.

Uncertainty is a universal experience of family caregivers caring for persons with a stroke and affects caregivers' readiness to care for their family members with a stroke. Guided by the unitary caring theory and unitary-caring hermeneutic-phenomenological research method, this study was conducted among 15 family caregivers of persons in the hospital who have survived strokes through in-depth semi-structured interviews. Five essences emerged from the analysis: living in a dark reality; yearning for professional support; enduring a life full of tribulations; attempting resolution; and creating new patterns of living.