Nursing research in to nursing culture etc

[talaxandra]

as some of you know, i've recently undertaken a masters, looking at why some icu nurses talk to their brain dead patients (https://allnurses.com/forums/f69/do-you-talk-to-brain-dead-patients-67338.html). as part of my justification for researching this topic, which hasn't previously been examined, i said:

it might be thought that the reason this area of nursing practice has not previously been studied is because it is not relevant or important. i disagree. nursing research by nurses tends to concentrate on the quantifiable (like hand-washing frequency [citation] or comparison of wound dressings [citation], demography (attrition[citation], aging nursing population [citation], and aspects of nursing practice and policy. though important topics in their own right, this focus on nursing work fails to examine nursing culture.

in the footnote i said that articles in nursing journals about nursing culture tend to focus on making changes [with 2 references], rather than examining the exisiting culture in a positive way [1 reference, which basically says just that].

one of my examiners has challenged this position, saying that this my be the case in icu, but not in nursing literature generally.

although i'm a nurse, my post grad qualifications aren't in nursing, and i'm therefore less familiar with nursing literature than he is. i certainly am not in a position to disagree. i was wondering if any of you know of articles (particulalry by nurses and/or in nursing journals) which examine aspects of nursing culture from a more sociological perspective, so that i can appropriately amend my thesis before final binding.

thank you :)

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

moving thread to intensive care unit (micu and sicu) to foster input.