Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

Using the Dreyfus Model Effectively

By the late 1970s or so, the nursing profession was in dire straits. In a nutshell, these were their problems, which I’ve drawn from several case studies and narratives:^[18]

• Nurses themselves were often disregarded as a mere commodity; they just carried out the highly trained doctor’s orders and weren’t expected to have any input on patient care.

• Because of pay-scale inequities, expert nurses were leaving direct patient care in droves. There was more money to be made in management, teaching, or the lecture circuit.

• Nursing education began to falter; many thought that formal models of practice were the best way to teach. An overreliance on formal methods and tools eroded real experience in practice.

• Finally, ...