Pragmatic Children’s Nursing

Duncan C. Randall is a Principal Teaching Fellow in Health Sciences at the University of Southampton.

"This book represents the first attempt to create a children’s nursing theory that involves giving children with illnesses or disabilities access to childhoods as close as possible to those of their peers. Claiming that children’s nursing has been overshadowed by adult-focused theories, the author explores the relationship between children, carers and nurses in the context of healthcare delivery…This is an outstanding text, a pleasure to read, and one that should appeal to pre-registration and postgraduate nursing students alike." —Nursing Children and Young People"Children’s nursing a very pragmatic exercise and to date has remained so academically. This is the first book I have seen which gives in-depth examination of children’s nursing from a theoretical and philosophical perspective. While this may ‘scare off’ potential readers who are clinical children’s nurses, the case examinations included give it a ‘real time’ feel that makes it relevant for anyone working in clinical practice in children’s nursing. It will make us all think of things differently, to the betterment of children and families when they need health care."—Linda Shields, Professor of Nursing, Charles Sturt University and Honorary Professor of Medicine, the University of Queensland, Australia"This is a book that will challenge nurses to think deeply and critically about fundamental issues of children, childhood and nursing. It strikes to the core of what children’s nursing is: its values, purpose and objectives, and it adds significantly to the growing debate of the value of family-centred care and other well-worn concepts."—Tony Long, Professor of Child and Family Health, University of Salford, UK"Randall’s Pragmatic Children’s Nursing is a greatly-needed, long-overdue book. As Randall highlights, conceptions of children’s nursing have been dominated by ‘medical models’ (e.g., ‘paediatric nursing’) and adult-focused theories that have profoundly limited our understandings of children’s lives and their health experiences. This text illuminates our understanding of children’s nursing by adapting important innovations in social and ethical studies of childhood within a ‘practice-friendly’ pragmatic theoretical framework. This book is outstanding."— Franco A. Carnevale, Professor in the Ingram School of Nursing, McGill University, Canada

• Preface 1. If it quacks like a pigeon, it’s a duck! The context of children’s nursing 2. Assumptions about understanding, nursing, children and childhoods 3. Children living a childhood 4. The "I , the thou and the them" of children’s nursing-Bauman 5. What’s the good of children’s nursing? 6. Worked example case studies 7. Afterword