This book seeks to provide students and practicing nurses with the tools to better understand and engage in scientific arguments to support quality nursing and evidence-based practice. The nature of nursing and its relationship with science remains an area of ongoing debate, controversy and considerable confusion to both students and practitioners. For a science-based health discipline, it is something of a paradox that most nursing students have limited exposure to scientific philosophy education, which is not covered in depth in many modern university nursing programmes. This work seeks to remedy this: in providing material on modern scientific research methods, with particular emphasis on the context of practice, it presents an alternative theoretical iteration of holistic nursing as scientific inquiry. The author is a passionate advocate for empirical and pragmatic approaches to nursing, and the book provides challenging ideas to support a new wave of critical-thinking in contemporary nursing, confronting postmodern dogma with contemporary scientific critique. In doing so, this text engages readers with the art of progressive empirical client-centred care, appropriate for the development of 21st century holistic nursing practice.

“Broad in scope but comprehensive in detail, this book will benefit nursing students, researchers and clinicians. The work is thorough, informed, provocative and readable. I anticipate using it frequently when teaching, and I recommend it to under and post-graduate nurses of all stripes.” – Dr Martin Lipscomb, University of Worcester
“I highly recommend this text for anyone teaching philosophy of nursing science at a graduate level. A thoughtful journey through the history of ideas about knowledge and truth claims in our discipline. And lots of fodder for lively dialogue!” - Dr. Sally Thorne, University of British Columbia, Canada
Recognizing the many and diverse pressures that nurses work under, Garrett has designed his book to serve as a textbook, a reference sources, or a concise guide and primer to scientific thinking and applications in nursing. He explains the blend of art and science that makes up nursing to emphasize the value of creative scientific thinking for practical nursing issues and for understanding how to avoid the pitfalls of non-science, pseudoscience, and even bad science along the way. -- Annotation ©2018 * (protoview.com) *

Dr Bernie Garrett is a Professor at the University of British Columbia, School of Nursing. He was a renal clinical nurse specialist for 15 years before becoming a nurse educator and holds a PhD in information Science. Dr Garrett currently works in the fields of health technologies and deceptive healthcare practices, and his work is underpinned by a passion for science and technology, and he frequently writes on these subjects. He is the author of Fluids & Electrolytes: Essentials for Healthcare Practice, and also co-author of the popular Clinical Pocket Reference for Nurses series which has sold over 60,000 copies to date.