2．The Development and Testing of the Functional Health Pattern Assessment Screening Tool (FHPAST)

　The evolution of nursing science has been slow and gradual. While most of the language used to describe the science has focused heavily on describing what nurses do, recent trends seem move the discipline into strategies that reflect on the knowledge used to ground the science and guide interventions. The emphasis placed on the need for nurses to articulate contributions to patient care outcomes has placed renewed exploration on the language used by the discipline to describe the conceptual focus of practice and interventions used to relieve patient suffering and promote healing.

　There are several descriptions used to categorize different philosophic perspectives used to clarify nursing's disciplinary focus and guide the development nursing content. These have been described as Knowledge as Problem Solving, Knowledge as Process and Integrated Knowledge as Cosmic Imperative (Jones, ¹⁹⁹⁷⁾.