Guardian of the Discipline
March 2025 Nursing Inquiry Editorial
Sally Thorne, PhD, RN, DSc (Hon), FAAN, FCAHS, FCAN, CM, says that the latest edition of her book Interpretive Description: Qualitative Research for Applied Practice published and soon to be released by Routledge, is actually her “memoir.” Described as centering an “unashamedly nursing perspective,” the influential text has had profound influence on the development of discipline-driven qualitative research. Over 25 years ago during discussions, conversations, and deep reflection on the role of theory interacting with clinical engagement and philosophy, research methodology naturally emerged as the way to thread all of these things together to generate knowledge. Now retired and as an active Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), Sally has an expansive career in nursing that serves as testimony to service in all realms of nursing: research, education, administration, and practice.
An RN since 1972 before graduating with her BSN from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1979, Sally soon was hired as a lecturer there, and then went on to complete her MSN in 1983. The UBC Model of Nursing inspired her to consider an academic career. This interest was stimulated further when, as an Assistant Professor (achieved 1985), there were rumors about widespread faculty cuts. At the time doctoral studies in nursing in Canada didn’t exist, so Sally was able to develop an interdisciplinary external degree program through Union Institute for Advanced Studies in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her supervisory committee included philosopher Hal Kirshbaum and nursing sociologist Penny MacElveen-Hoehn as well as respected external nursing faculty committee members Juliene Lipson from the University of California (San Francisco) and Marcie Catanzaro from the University of Washington. Sally received her PhD in 1990 and published her dissertation as the book, Negotiating Health Care: The Social Context of Chronic Illness (Sage, 1993).
Sally, as a new tenured Associate Professor (1991), was instrumental in launching the UBC nursing doctoral program in 1991. Within this program she became the nursing philosophy instructor and the interactions with other colleagues, students, philosophers, and nursing leaders around nursing theory and philosophy drove much of her thinking and her publications (see below). Sally was promoted to Professor in 1997, and it was during this time that she developed the qualitative research framework called Interpretive Description (ID). Driven by the discipline-specific lens of applied sciences like nursing, ID recommends the logical application of a variety of qualitative research techniques and tools to serve practice-specific questions.
Sally served as the Director of the UBC Nursing Program from 2002 to 2010, working with faculty and students in ways that continued to deeply impact her thinking about nursing philosophy and theory. She believes that nursing theory has a place in the future of the discipline, but that we have to “move outside of memorizing names” and instead explore the key ideas that all nursing theories try to capture in the endless search for ways to describe the discipline’s epistemological and ontological groundings. One of the most important things about Sally that is so unique is her keen conceptual “eye,” described by colleagues as the ability to perceive, and then to articulate, perspectives that challenge what nurses assume is true or take for granted as being reality. This quality demonstrates what scholarship and science is really about — which is being constantly alert for assumptions and holes in logic or arguments that prevent more accurate, more thoughtful, and more comprehensive understanding. Sally’s insights and arguments challenge all of us to take a second, third, or perhaps fourth look at ways in which our thinking might be wandering away from meaningful scholarship. At the same time, Sally’s expansive critical thinking is coupled with a firm grounding and foundational understanding of the nature of nursing. She is very clear and aware of the specific perspective that nursing brings to the study of phenomena that concern scholars in other disciplines as well. Sally quickly detects when we drift into territory that is not our own, and she provides the lantern which shines light on the drift, bringing us back to the core purposes and perspectives that nurses inhabit.
Sally is a sought-after speaker, researcher, and educator. She is a mentor to many, many nurses all over the world. When Nursology.net was launching, Sally reminded everyone in an editorial in Nursing Inquiry, for which she is the editor, that the term nursology had been used since 1971. She did welcome the website saying she hoped “that it attracts the attention, engagement, and dialogue it deserves, and that it helps bring a new generation of nurses back into an appreciative understanding of why the study of nursing really matters.” Her contributions to nursing research and philosophy reflect a dedication to the discipline that is rare and to be celebrated, and this is why Nursology.net has designated her a Guardian of the Discipline.
Contributions to Nursing’s Theoretical and Philosophical Scholarship
Thorne, S., Jillings, C., Ellis, D. & Perry, J.A. (1993). A nursing model in action: The University of British Columbia experience. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 18, 1259-1266. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1993.18081259.x
Thorne, S.E. & Hayes, V.E. (1997). Nursing Praxis: Knowledge and Action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Thorne, S. , Canam, C., Dahinten, S., Hall, W., Henderson, A., Kirkham, S. (1998). Nursing’s metaparadigm concepts: Disempacting the debates. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 27, 1257-1268. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1998.00623.x
Thorne, S., Reimer Kirkham, S. & Henderson, A. (1999). Ideological implications of paradigm discourse in nursing research, education and practice theory. Nursing Inquiry, 6, 123-131. DOI: 10.1046/j.1440-1800.1999.00016.x
Stajduhar, K. I., Balneaves, L., & Thorne, S. E. (2001). A case for the “middle ground”: Exploring the tensions of postmodern thought in nursing. Nursing Philosophy, 2, 72-82. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1466-769x.2001.00033.x
Thorne, S. (2001). People and their parts: Deconstructing the debates in theorizing nursing’s clients. Nursing Philosophy, 2, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1466-769X.2000.00067.x
Thorne, S.E., Henderson, A.D., McPherson, G.I., & Pesut, B.K. (2004). The problematic allure of the binary in nursing theoretical discourse. Nursing Philosophy, 5, 208-215. DOI: 10.1111/j.1466-769X.2004.00189.x
Thorne, S. (2014). Nursing as social justice: A case for the emancipatory thrust of conventional theorizing. In Kagan, P., Smith, M., & Chinn, P.L. (Eds.), Philosophies and practices of emancipatory nursing: Social justice as praxis (pp. 79-90). New York: Routledge.
Thorne, S., & Sawatzky R. (2014). Particularizing the general: Sustaining theoretical integrity in the context of an evidence-based practice agenda. Advances in Nursing Science, 27(1), 5-18. https://doi.org/10.1097/ANS.0000000000000011
Thorne, S. (2019.) Theoretical foundations of nursing practice. In P.A. Potter, A.G. Perry, P. Stockert, A. Hall, B. Astle, & W. Duggleby (Eds), Canadian fundamentals of nursing (6rd ed) (pp. 63-74). Toronto: Elsevier/ Mosby.
Thorne, S. (2020). Rethinking Carper’s personal knowing for 21st century nursing. Nursing Philosophy, 21, e12307. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nup.12307\
Thorne, S. (2022). Reflections on the nursing theory movement. Nursing Philosophy, 23(4), e12406. https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12406
Thorne, S. (2024). On the contribution of the ‘nursing theorists.’ In M. Lipscomb (Ed.), Routledge handbook of philosophy and nursing (pp. 17-27). Routledge
Integrating Nursing’s Epistemology into Applied Qualitative Research Method
Thorne, S.E. (1991). Methodological orthodoxy in qualitative nursing research: Analysis of the issues. Qualitative Health Research, 1, 178-199. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973239100100203
Thorne, S., Reimer Kirkham, S. & MacDonald-Emes, J. (1997). Interpretive description: A non-categorical qualitative alternative for developing nursing knowledge. Research in Nursing & Health,20(2),169-177. DOI: Thorne, S.E. (2001). The implications of disciplinary agenda on quality criteria for qualitative research. In J.M. Morse, J. Swanson, & A. Kuzel (Eds.), The nature of qualitative evidence (pp. 141-159). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Thorne, S. (2011). Toward methodological emancipation in applied health research. Qualitative Health Research, 21(4), 443-453. DOI: 10.1177/1049732310392595
Thorne, S., Stephens, J. & Truant, T. (2016). Building qualitative study design using nursing’s disciplinary epistemology. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 72(2), 451-460. DOI: 10.1111/jan.12822
Chiu, P., Thorne, S., Schick-Makaroff, K., & Cummings, G. (2022). Theory utilization in applied qualitative nursing research. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 78(12), 4034-4041. http://doi.org/10.1111/jan.15456
Thorne, S. (2022). Unpacking nursing’s epistemological foundations as a basis for applied qualitative design. In U. Flick (Ed)., SAGE Handbooks of Qualitative Data Analysis and of Qualitative Data Collection (pp. 1129-1145). Sage. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781529765281
Thorne, S. (2016). Interpretive Description: Qualitative Research for Applied Practice (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. [Third edition in press, June 2025 publication.]
About the Author
Jennifer Stephens was supervised by Dr. Sally Thorne in her doctoral program (UBD, 2018). Jennifer is honored to work with one of nursing’s finest scholars and mentors. She is currently Assistant Site Manager of Nursology.net.