Contributors – Eun Ok Im, PhD, MPH, RN, CNS, FAAN; ANS Editor
Emily West, MA, RN, Assistant Managing Editor
ANS Website
At a recent meeting of nursing journal editors and editorial teams, we were treated to a keynote address by Dr. Marsha Fowler, co-chair of the 2025 ANA Code of Ethics Revision Panel1 and author of Nursing Ethics, 1880s to the Present; An Archaeology of Lost Wisdom and Identity.2 Dr. Fowler’s keynote, chronicling the trajectory of nursing’s social and relational ethics, sparked a conversation among audience members about a familiar tension in nursing education; namely, that we spend a great deal of time teaching students how to do nursing, but less time teaching them how to be nurses.
To be a nurse is to be anchored in nursing’s unique disciplinary knowledge and to have a clarity and purpose that comes from scholarship. If we want to prepare nurses not just to do, but to be, we must support the spaces where nursing knowledge is cultivated and stewarded. Peer-reviewed nursing journals provide those spaces, offering platforms for nurses to share discoveries, challenge outdated ideas, examine the practical and ethical dimensions of care, explore edge running and/or innovative concepts, and formalize nursing’s unique body of knowledge.
Advances in Nursing Science holds a distinct and important place in the nursing science ecosystem as a peer-reviewed journal committed to challenging dominant assumptions and advancing nursing knowledge through high quality scholarship since its founding in 1978 (see an historical account of the journal here). The journal remains deeply engaged in contemporary conversations on nursing’s role in social justice and the discipline’s tradition of social ethics. Upcoming special issue 48(4) features a collection of editorials and opinion papers authored by distinguished thought leaders reflecting on foundational nursing texts and their relevance in the sociopolitical landscape of present-day nursing science.
We welcome all high-quality submissions that reflect this mission, engage critically with nursing’s philosophical foundations, and advance socially responsive nursing theory. Advances in Nursing Science recently announced a call for papers for an upcoming issue focused on challenging the status quo in nursing theory, and in particular welcomes global perspectives on nursing knowledge development. Submit your manuscripts here.
For guidance related to manuscript success, see the excellent series of articles by Leslie Nicoll on the Writer’s Camp Website.
Sources
- Fowler, M. (2024). Nursing Ethics, 1880s to the Present: An Archaeology of Lost Wisdom and Identity (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003262107
- American Nurses Association. (2025). Code of ethics for nurses. American Nurses Publishing. https://codeofethics.ana.org/home
How can we teach nurses to think nursing? Use nursing language when we teach, not medical (or the language of economics or psychology or…) language. Where do we find nursing language? In the grand nursing theories – each theory is a language system in itself, conceptualizing the whole of nursing in a comprehensive integrated congruent system of thought and language (and values).
When we don’t recognize medical language as communicating medical theory, we don’t recognize that we are teaching nursing students to “think” medicine rather than nursing. I challenge you to commit to speaking nursing consistently…yes, it takes some work and some time – what’s happening is you will be, in Kuhn’s terms, changing paradigms – changing world views. Not easy, but if you want to teach nursing – teach persons to BE nurses, not just exercise certain functions associated with nursing – it’s necessary.