Tacit knowing held to the disciplinary standard: in NU502 Unit 1, a finished post weighs one veteran nurse's unexplained call through Benner and Polanyi, and adds a reply to one classmate. Searches like "nu 502 unit 1 assignment example", "nu502 unit 1 sample" and "nu502 unit 1 example" land here.
"He Looks Wrong to Me": Is a Veteran Nurse's Unexplained Call Knowledge?
NU502 · Unit 1 Discussion
Posted by [Student Name]
Composite case; no real patient or unit is described.
Initial Post
Nursing asks for knowledge that can be shared, taught and tested, yet much of what experienced nurses know resists being stated. That is the difficulty I want to work through this week, because I think it sits under a question every discipline has to answer: what counts as knowing something?
Here is a composite case. On the first night after a bowel resection, a 68-year-old man has a heart rate of 96, blood pressure of 128/74, oxygen saturation of 95 percent on two liters and a temperature of 37.6 degrees Celsius. His early warning score is 2, below the unit's escalation threshold of 5. His nurse, with 22 years on the surgical floor, calls a rapid response anyway. Asked why, she says only, "He looks wrong to me. He's too quiet." Four hours later he is in the intensive care unit with an anastomotic leak.
Benner (1984) drew on the philosopher Michael Polanyi and on Thomas Kuhn to distinguish practical knowledge, knowing how, from theoretical knowledge, knowing that. Expert nurses, she argued, recognize whole situations and respond to them before they can say which features they noticed. On this reading, the nurse's call rested on knowing how: she recognized a pattern her colleagues on the unit could not yet name, and the recognition was real knowledge even though she could not state it as a proposition. The research partly supports her. A systematic review of 18 studies found that nurses' worry or concern about a patient could be described by 37 signs and symptoms grouped into 10 general indicators, and that worry could be present with or without a change in vital signs (Douw et al., 2015). "Too quiet" sounds like one of those indicators: a change in how a patient engages, noticed before the numbers move.
But this is where my argument turns back on itself. Until someone puts it into words, knowing how cannot be taught to a new graduate, cannot be checked against outcomes, and cannot be defended when the call turns out to be wrong. A nurse who says "he looks wrong" is right often enough to be trusted by colleagues who know her, and that trust does not transfer to anyone else. The research tradition that tries to close this gap is the one Douw et al. represent: interpretive and mixed-method studies that ask experienced nurses what they saw, then turn the answers into indicators that can be taught and tested. So my answer to this week's question is yes, the call was knowledge, and it becomes disciplinary knowledge only when it is described well enough that someone could show it was wrong.
Reply to a Classmate
Marcus, you argued that the nurse's call was "just experience" and that experience is not knowledge until it is published. I agree that publication makes knowledge shareable, but I would push on the word "just." What evidence would change your mind? If the nurse's calls were tracked for a year and turned out to predict deterioration better than the score did, would you then count them as knowledge, or only the study that tracked them? I ask because your answer decides whether practical knowing can ever be part of the discipline, or whether it only becomes knowledge when a researcher writes it down.
References
Benner, P. (1984). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice. Addison-Wesley.
Douw, G., Schoonhoven, L., Holwerda, T., Huisman-de Waal, G., van Zanten, A. R. H., van Achterberg, T., & van der Hoeven, J. G. (2015). Nurses' worry or concern and early recognition of deteriorating patients on general wards in acute care hospitals: A systematic review. Critical Care, 19, 230. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-015-0950-5
How this NU502 Unit 1 example is structured
A thesis opens the post: practical knowledge counts, but it becomes disciplinary knowledge only once it is stated in a form others can examine. Paragraph two gives the composite case without commentary, including the number that argued against calling. The third applies Benner's distinction and locates the nurse's judgment in pattern recognition built over many similar patients, citing the original 1984 book rather than a summary of it. The fourth turns the argument around, asking what would have followed had the nurse been wrong, and whether the discipline can count as knowledge something only one person is able to check. It closes on a position: tacit knowing is a starting point for theory, not a substitute for it. The reply, a single paragraph, questions a classmate's example by asking what observation would have proved them mistaken.
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NU502 Unit 1 questions, answered
Is intuition the same thing as tacit knowledge?
Not quite. Intuition usually describes the experience of knowing without a stated reason, while tacit knowledge names the underlying skill that makes that experience possible. Benner's work treats the veteran's quick grasp as expertise built from many similar situations. Keeping the terms apart in your post shows you have read the sources closely rather than using the words as synonyms.
Must I take a side on whether practice knowledge counts?
Yes. The strongest posts commit to a position and then qualify it, rather than surveying views and stopping. You might argue that practical knowledge counts fully, or that it counts only once articulated. Either can earn full credit if the case supports it and your reply engages a classmate who took the opposite position.
How technical should the clinical case be?
Enough to be credible, not so much that the theory disappears under detail. A few specifics, such as the score and the change the nurse noticed, give the argument something to work on. Keep the patient composite, and let most of your words go to the question of knowledge rather than to the clinical story itself.