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Specific citations throughout provide immediate access to pertinent references that
substantiate relevancy.

Foundational Elements
The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education has been built on the
strong foundation of nursing as a discipline, the foundation of a liberal education, and principles
of competency-based education.
Nursing as a Discipline
The Essentials, as the framework for preparing nursing’s future workforce, intentionally reflect
and integrate nursing as a discipline. The emergence of nursing as a discipline had its earliest
roots in Florence Nightingale’s thoughts about the nature of nursing. Believing nursing to be
both a science and an art, she conceptualized the whole patient (mind, body, and spirit) as
the center of nursing’s focus. The influence of the environment on an individual’s health and
recovery was of utmost importance. The concepts of health, healing, well-being, and the
interconnectedness with the multidimensional environment also were noted in her work.
Although Nightingale did not use the word “caring” explicitly, the concept of care and a
commitment to others were evident through her actions (Dunphy, 2015). In the same era of
Florence Nightingale, nurse pioneer Mary Seacole was devoted to healing the wounded during
the Crimean war.
Following Nightingale, the nursing profession underwent a period of disorganization and
confusion as it began to define itself as a distinct scientific discipline. Early nursing leaders
(including Mary Eliza Mahoney, Effie Taylor, Annie Goodrich, Agatha Hodgins, Esther
Lucille Brown, and Loretta Ford) sought to define the functions of the nurse (Gunn, 1991;
Keeling, Hehman, & Kirchgessner, 2017). Other leaders devoted their efforts to addressing
discrimination, advancing policies, and creating a collective voice for the profession. It would
be difficult to gain an understanding of this period of the profession’s development without
considering the work of Lavinia Dock, Estelle Osborne, Mary Elizabeth Carnegie, Ildaura MurilloRohde, and many other fearless champions.
Contemporary nursing as it is practiced today began to take shape as a discipline in the
1970s and 1980s. Leaders of this era shared the belief that the discipline of nursing was the
study of the well-being patterning of human behavior and the constant interaction with
the environment, including relationships with others, health, and the nurse (Rogers, 1970;
Donaldson & Crowley, 1978; Fawcett, 1984; Chinn & Kramer 1983, 2018; Chinn, 2019; Roy &
Jones, 2007). The concept of caring also was described as the defining attribute of the nursing
discipline (Leininger, 1978; Watson, 1985). Newman (1991) spoke to the need to sharpen the
focus of the discipline of nursing to better define its social relevance and the nature of its
service. Newman, Smith, Pharris, and Jones (2008) affirmed caring as the focus of the discipline,
suggesting that relationships were the unifying construct. Smith and Parker (2010) later posited
that relationships were built on partnership, presence, and shared meaning.
In a historical analysis of literature on the discipline of nursing, five concepts emerged as
defining the discipline: human wholeness; health; healing and well-being; environment-health
relationship; and caring. When practicing from a holistic perspective, nurses understand the

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THE ESSENTIALS: CORE COMPETENCIES FOR PROFESSIONAL NURSING EDUCATION