ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we considered the need for a more complex epistemology and scholarship that could provide a foundation for humanly sensitive care. Within this spirit we discussed phronesis (actionable knowledge), empathy, and the challenge of integrating science, art and morality as touchstones for the kind of more holistic knowing that we believe humanly sensitive care needs. In this present chapter, we deepen some of these epistemological considerations with specific reference to nursing practice and name ‘embodied relational understanding’ as the kind of knowing that is complex enough to underpin caring. Further, in acknowledging the underrepresented aesthetic dimension of knowing, we begin to explore the possibilities of more aesthetic research-based descriptions that can expand existing preconceptions of what is called ‘evidence based practice’.
