Professional Capital: An Informational Approach to Nursing

While professions require distinct bodies of recognized knowledge for identification, the identity and its respective capital of the Nursing profession is confounded by other healthcare professions whereby multiple professionals often work as a team in providing care to the patient. The Nursing profession, whose roots formed through the development of medicine, is not currently designed to be a medical tributary, but a unique patient-oriented doctrine with its own educational programs and licensing requirements. How Nursing manages the representation of this unique body of knowledge is fundamental to their 'Professional Capital'. An initial review of informational artifacts yields at best, inconsistent professional representation of Nursing. This exploratory study intends to examine solely informational artifacts utilized by and for Nursing as being potentially socially representative of their image, reputation, and in effect, 'Professional Capital', a term not currently found in the literature, thus the exploratory nature of this study.