Perspectives in Nursing Research
I took a few moments reading an article about men in nursing in the latest issue of Nurse Leader this morning. Although the research is sound and all the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed I felt the article lacked understanding of what men face in the profession of nursing. This is of course my perspective and hence this blog about how we look at research in the profession as the holy grail of how we need to do everything… We have lost our perspective and way with research when research should have been used as a guiding light! We have abandoned the humanity for statistical outcomes and qualitative studies often shunned by universities and called “soft”…
In nursing research, we often celebrate numbers, percentages, p-values, means, and confidence intervals. These metrics tell us something. But do they tell us everything?
Far too often, I see research presented as definitive, resting solely on quantitative data extracted from populations that the researchers barely understand. These studies may be statistically sound but conceptually shallow, offering clean graphs without messy truths. It’s like staring into a crystal and declaring your view as the only view based only on one facet, ignoring the angles that refract different shades of reality.
A well-cut crystal has dozens, sometimes hundreds, of facets. Each reflects light differently. Similarly, every human experience, especially in nursing, is multi-dimensional. Pain, healing, trauma, joy, loss, and resilience aren’t linear, and they certainly don’t always conform to the assumptions embedded in our data collection tools.
When nursing research fixates only on the numbers, it risks flattening the experience of patients, nurses, and communities into a limited view. That one pristine facet, the quantitative result, may seem objective. But if it’s not complemented by the lived realities and the social context behind the data, we risk drawing conclusions that are incomplete, if not outright misleading.
For example, we might quantify a reduction in hospital readmissions and call a program a success. But without exploring why people aren’t returning—whether it’s due to better care, fear, mistrust, or barriers to access—we don’t truly understand the impact. Without engaging the voices of those most affected, we risk polishing only one side of the crystal while the others remain clouded or cracked.
Nursing, by its nature, is holistic. Our research should be too.
We must advocate for a multi-perspectival approach, one that incorporates both quantitative data and qualitative narratives, statistical rigor and contextual insight. This doesn’t mean discarding the numbers; it means using them as one angle of understanding in a broader, reflective, and ethically grounded view.
It also means asking uncomfortable questions:
Who is missing from this dataset?
Who defined the variables, and do they reflect the community’s reality?
What biases, social, cultural, systemic, are baked into our assumptions?
Who are the authors, analysts, researchers, and scientists sharing their insights into the human condition?
To honor the depth of the human condition, nursing researchers must hold the crystal ball to the light and intentionally rotate it. Every shift reveals a new facet—another truth, another voice, another question worth asking.
That’s the kind of research that not only informs policy and practice but also respects the dignity of those we care for.
Let’s stop treating a single reflection as the whole truth. Nursing deserves better. Our populations deserve better. And our science must reflect the full spectrum of light.
