Carper’s Ways of Knowing in Oncology:
Relating A Nurse’s Experiences
Carper’s ways of knowing takes nursing and breaks it into four basic areas; empirical, aesthetics, personal and ethical. We deal with patients in a wholistic fashion which encompasses each of the ways of knowing. Each is unique but necessary to have a competent, well rounded nurse. A patient needs to have confidence in the nurse, which comes through demonstrating knowledge, necessary for safety in the care of our patients, understanding and empathy for emotional and psychological support and a code of ethics that guides each of us in our own way.
Empirical knowing is that which is fact based, research tested and can be repeated in practice. In nursing, the knowledge we possess and use every day in our practice is definable and necessary to provide safe and
…show more content…
Empirical is exemplified from our first day of nursing school when we are learning the basics of lung sounds and finding a vein for starting an IV to the art of transferring that new surgical patient and teaching them how to get out of bed the first time. I have been in oncology nursing for almost 20 years and continue to learn empirically every day. I am Chemotherapy Certified which included learning about and regularly being tested on the various therapies used in treating cancer, what side effects to watch for as well as what to do when side effects or reactions occur. Notably, during the treatment of a patient using paclitaxel, I had just started an initial infusion. While attending to other patients in the treatment room I looked over at Mike (not his real name) and said, “you don’t look so good”. He simply responded, “I don’t feel so good”. With that he went into an anaphylactic reaction. It was estimated he had received 5mL of the chemotherapy. The other nurse and I relied on our empirical knowledge on what we needed to do to reverse this reaction. After giving the