PPN 201: Relational Inquiry and Ways of Knowing

Vocabulary flashcards covering core concepts of relational inquiry, forms of knowing, and contextual care from Week 1 of PPN 201.

Habits of knowing

Familiar, often taken-for-granted ways of noticing, interpreting, and acting that develop through education, professional culture, prior experience, and everyday routines.

Intentional practice

A nursing approach that interrupts automatic responses by asking reflective questions to determine whether clinical expertise fits the specific situation.

Empirical knowing

A form of knowing that contributes scientific knowledge, assessment findings, research, and clinical evidence, guided by asking what evidence indicates and what remains uncertain.

Personal/self knowing

A form of knowing centered on awareness of one's own beliefs, feelings, experiences, prejudices, and influence, guided by asking how one's own response shapes the encounter.

Sociopolitical knowing

A form of knowing addressing power, social determinants, history, policy, economics, and access, guided by asking what conditions enable or restrict available choices.

Aesthetic knowing

A form of knowing that involves recognizing what matters and responding appropriately in a particular clinical situation.

Ethical knowing

A form of knowing centered on moral obligations and examining what ought to be done.

The five Cs

Core relational inquiry concepts identified as compassion, curiosity, commitment, competence, and corresponding.

Relational inquiry

A nursing practice framework that combines relational orientation (how a nurse looks at a situation) with inquiring action (how a nurse investigates and responds).

Intrapersonal factors

Factors occurring within the client, family, nurse, or others, including emotions, bodily experience, beliefs, assumptions, hopes, fears, and identity.

Interpersonal factors

Factors and dynamics occurring between people, including communication, support, conflict, trust, authority, expectations, and whose knowledge counts.

Contextual factors

Conditions shaping a healthcare encounter, including staffing, institutional routines, finances, employment, policy, culture, and broader social relations.

Decontextualized care

An approach that treats individuals as isolated and freely choosing, attributes poor outcomes to individual failure, equates health strictly with test results or adherence, and applies routines without examining their consequences.

Lily Petrov case

A teaching case of a 71-year-old retired nurse living alone with CKD and a recent cholecystectomy, demonstrating the interplay of clinical risks with personal values and rural contextual factors.

Dish With One Spoon territory

A treaty territory covering Toronto, associated with the Treaty of Niagara and shared by nations including the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee, emphasizing peace, friendship, and respect in protecting and sharing the land.