Journal of professional nursing : official journal of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing
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This article examines the evolution of state and federal legislation and court opinions in the 1990s concerning treatment abatement and assisted suicide. The recent Supreme Court decision on assisted suicide is summarized, and its rejection of a recognized constitutional right to assisted suicide is explored. Additionally, surveys of the opinions of nurses, physicians, and the public regarding the permissibility of assisted suicide are evaluated. The contradictions between public opinion and some federal and state legislation are highlighted and discussed.
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The purpose of this longitudinal qualitative study was (1) to extend the work of Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule by interviewing female university nursing students to determine their "way of knowing" according to the Women's Ways of Knowing (WWK) schema and (2) to determine what relationship this way of knowing might have with critical thinking when accumulating a specific body of knowledge such as nursing. Interviews were conducted with 21 sophomore nursing students. Fourteen were reinterviewed their junior year, and 10 were interviewed or participated in a focus group their senior year. ⋯ Connected knowing was found to be congruent with nursing and the ways these women wanted to be as nurses. Separate knowing was found to be incongruent with nursing except for critical thinking purposes. Contrary to the notion that critical thinking is principled rather than procedural, procedural knowing, according to WWK, became the principle on which these women based their nursing actions, moving them to constructed knowers and caring, critical thinkers as they experienced nursing education.