Divergences in Diagnosis: Medicine and Nursing. A Kuhnian Analysis

Medicine is characterized by its diagnostic power, a strong consensus among professionals when diagnosing, and a standardized classification system of diseases (i. i. e. the WHO ICD). On the other hand, nursing faces a disconnect between theory and practice (theory-practice gap, Risjord, 2010), even though it is currently supported by the nursing care process (NCP), a standardized diagnostic system (NANDA), and its own academic corpus. However, the lack of integration between theoretical research and practice impacts the NCP, particularly in the diagnosis, which differs from the medical one due to its taxonomy and language. In that sense, both diagnoses are analyzed from a Kuhnian perspective to identify the differences that affect the success of nursing in the health care system. It is hypothesized that the gap between theory and practice contributes to the lack of robustness in nursing diagnosis, so the objective is to specify how this gap manifests itself. Finally, by virtue of the characteristics of philosophical research, the methodological perspective of this article focuses on the conceptual and critical analysis of the selected bibliographical material.