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The contribution of the social sciences to nurse education in Australia
Alan R. Petersen
Sociology Program, School of Social Sciences, Murdoch University
Anne Winkler
Behavioural Health Science School of Nursing, Curtin University of Technology
Abstract
In 1989 we conducted a survey of the 33 Australian tertiary education programs leading to nurse registration, that had been in operation for three or more years. We found that all devoted a proportion of their curricula to content from the social and behavioural sciences (SBSs). The methods and findings of this study are presented in detail elsewhere (Petersen and Winkler, 1990; Winkler and Petersen, 1991), however we found that the percentage of total formal classroom hours devoted to SBS content varied from 6 per cent to 33 per cent across programs with half of the programs allocating 20 per cent or more to these areas. The survey made clear that the SBSs had been allocated an important place in the first wave of tertiary nursing curricula. It is therefore timely to reflect on the factors that have led the nursing profession to make such strong investment in education in the SBSs and to raise questions about the future role that these disciplines may play in the development of nursing knowledge and nursing education. This paper therefore considers the major arguments that have been advanced for the inclusion of the SBSs in nursing curricula, identifies some factors influencing the adoption of particular SBS disciplines, and then draws some implications from the discussion for the future development of curricula.
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