UC Irvine

In the field of nursing, narratives of professional identity have been, and remain, closely tied to the shape(s) of the discipline. How we conceptualize our nursing-selves, individually and collectively, is intimately related to how nurses see themselves and their practices, how we compare, contrast, and relate our discipline to related professions, and with the widespread, but imprecise popular culture narratives regarding the form and function of nursing. As we argue here, reimagining nursing identity/identities is essential to radical change for patients, communities, and ourselves. Refocusing, or perhaps replacing altogether, the conceptual lenses through which we see ourselves, and those through which others see us, reaffirms our role in shaping the nursing identity which emerges from complex current, as well as historical, social, and cultural relations. Despite its relatively recent rise to prominence in academia and popular politics, the concept of identity has a long history in the Western philosophical tradition (Appiah, 2010; Lewis, 1966; Ricoeur, 1991; Sayers, 1999). A discussion of its intellectual genealogy elucidates how we can use the concept as a tool in pursuit of nursing’s radical reimagination.