This activity is to be completed after studying the presentation, Turning Your Review of the Literature into a Draft Answer, and its accompanying discussion questions.
For this activity, you will evaluate a sample response to the discussion question with which you worked earlier. Please read the sample response below and then follow the directions to evaluate the response.
Based on the assigned readings, analyze how knowledge is obtained through personal experiences, tradition, authority, and intuition in your discipline. Evaluate each source of knowledge in terms of its strengths and limitations, as it applies to how your discipline obtains knowledge.
In the profession of mental health, knowledge comes from various disciplines. By investigating case studies, experimental designs, and longitudinal reviews, scholars confront, challenge, and confirm many different research engines (Hartman, 1990). It is through this investigative process that the development of knowledge describes one's enhancement for comprehension and application of ideas by linking values and actions in the understanding of one's own limitations of strengths and weaknesses. Hartman (1990) states that the assumptions that one makes can be better understood by evaluating how they are structured to help widen the boundaries that professionals set.
Nursing is limited when trying to define knowledge in the operations performed daily in direct contact with clients; whereas other areas appear to have a nomadic atmosphere (Welsh & Lyons, 2001). Mental health counselors are able to apply knowledge to a client's situation by making decisions based on tools of assessments or by observations that will best be utilized in their care. It is a form that can be labeled as intuition, and, according to Welsh and Lyons, can be utilized to improve the quality of one's own life by deciding what is right for one's self. There are prototypes that might help in understanding patterns of knowing, described as empirical, ethical, aesthetic, and personal, which are developed to clarify the epistemology of nursing or other disciplines (Berragan, 1998).
Intuition is utilized in everyday life without thinking consciously. It can be utilized through structured rules without being aware of the rules; which can help one become an experienced mental health counselor (Eisengart & Faiver, 1996). It also can set weak limitations due to intuition being based on what someone feels is right or wrong. This predicts an opinion and not a fact. Knowledge is ever growing and changing as clients and experiences differ. Through these experiences, knowledge generates critical thinking in the operation of counseling for clients that require the assistance of direct care. Knowledge is gained through readings, teachings, and hands-on training from other scholars, co-workers, and the clients themselves. Researching these experiences helps contribute to knowledge as it is intensifies another way to look at what is being perceived by others (Hartman, 1990). It is through this unconscious, intuitive thinking that mental health counselors are able to associate the issues that each client suffers with a mental disorder (Eisengart & Faiver, 1996).
Through the readings, it is apparent that education is important, especially on a higher academic standard (Welsh & Lyons, 2001). It would then be fair to postulate that the higher expectation is to ascertain knowledge. As a doctorate student, the level is proven by the formulation of a dissertation that provides mental health counselors with knowledge that is derived by human and physical sciences.
These expectations are then proven by evidenced-based scientific experiences that a doctoral student researches to apply the application of a theory and technique in the comprehension of knowledge (Welsh & Lyons, 2001). In the mental health arena, clients are given the opportunity to expand the counselor's knowledge with assessment tools and observations. The counselor can then share, through personal experiences, traditional knowledge gained in scholarly teachings or trainings, and intuition to help the client through their difficulties. Although professional, situations in which intuition and professional feedback are utilized are evolving, as problems differ as much as client suffering. Human errors occur as concentration is strained by consistent research and reading. It is at this level that one must try to control the process of the action (Reason, 1990).
Berragan, L. (1998). Nursing practice draws upon several different ways of knowing. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 7(3), 209–217. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2702.1998.00146.x
Eisengart, S. P., & Faiver, C. M. (1996). Intuition in mental health counseling. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 18(1), 41–53.
Hartman, A. (1990). Many ways of knowing. Social Work, 35(1), 3.
Reason, J. (1990). Human error. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Welsh, I., & Lyons, C. M. (2001). Evidence-based care and the case for intuition and tacit knowledge in clinical assessment and decision making in mental health nursing practice: An empirical contribution to the debate. Journal of Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing, 8(4), 299–305.
After you have read the sample response:
The answers should be written in a Word document, using correct APA format and style. The answer does not need to have a title page, abstract, or table of contents. Begin with a brief introduction explaining the main points of the paper. In the main body, identify the answer being given with a correctly formatted section heading, using Level 1 headings. A conclusion should follow the main body. Include a reference list for any sources used, which should also be correctly cited in the paper.
Doc. reference: phd_t1_coun_u06a1_h02_evaldisc.html