What is nursing using Boyer's scholarship of integration?

Boyer's Scholarship of Integration in Nursing

Boyer's scholarship of integration in nursing refers to one of four dimensions of scholarly work that involves synthesizing knowledge across disciplines, placing findings in broader contexts, and making connections across isolated facts to create new interpretive frameworks for nursing practice and education. 1, 2

The Four Dimensions of Boyer's Scholarship Model

Boyer's framework reconceptualized scholarship beyond traditional research to include four distinct but interconnected dimensions 1, 2:

• Scholarship of Discovery: Traditional research and generation of new knowledge through systematic investigation 1
• Scholarship of Integration: Synthesizing information across disciplines, placing specialties in larger context, and making connections across isolated facts 1, 2
• Scholarship of Application: Applying knowledge to clinical problems and bridging research, practice, and education 3, 4
• Scholarship of Teaching: Transmitting, transforming, and extending knowledge through educational activities 1, 2

Core Characteristics of the Scholarship of Integration

The scholarship of integration specifically involves 1, 2:

• Cross-disciplinary synthesis: Bringing together knowledge from multiple fields to create comprehensive understanding of nursing phenomena
• Contextual interpretation: Placing specialized nursing knowledge within broader healthcare, social, and theoretical frameworks
• Pattern recognition: Identifying connections between seemingly isolated facts or findings to generate new insights
• Knowledge translation: Making research findings accessible and meaningful across different practice settings and disciplines

Application to Nursing Practice and Education

Integration scholarship enables nurses to synthesize multiple clinical practice guidelines, identify complementary strategies, and develop comprehensive approaches to complex patient care challenges. 5

Practical applications include 5:

• Guideline synthesis: Systematically mapping similarities, duplications, gaps, and contradictions across multiple clinical guidelines to create integrated care strategies
• Framework development: Creating comprehensive models like the eight-factor harm prevention framework (SCANDMMe Please) that synthesize evidence across multiple preventable conditions
• Complex intervention design: Developing multi-component interventions that balance complementary actions for use in variable health systems

Criteria for Scholarly Integration Work

For integration work to qualify as scholarship, it must meet three essential criteria 3, 4:

• Documentation: Systematic recording of the integration process, sources, and synthesis methods
• Peer review: Subjecting the integrated knowledge to critique by other scholars and practitioners
• Dissemination: Sharing findings through publication, presentation, or other means to enable use by others

Institutional Recognition and Evaluation

Boyer's model provides nursing institutions and managers with a framework for evaluating and rewarding diverse forms of scholarly contribution beyond traditional research productivity. 1, 2

Implementation strategies include 1:

• Professional development plans: Structured approaches that recognize integration scholarship as legitimate academic work
• Employee portfolios: Documentation systems that capture integration activities such as guideline synthesis, framework development, and cross-disciplinary collaboration
• Promotion criteria: Revised academic advancement standards that value integration scholarship equally with discovery research

Distinction from Other Scholarly Activities

Integration scholarship differs from scholarly practice in that it requires systematic documentation, peer review, and dissemination to advance nursing knowledge beyond individual clinical application. 3, 4

The progression involves 3, 4:

• Scholarly practice: Using evidence-based approaches in clinical care without formal documentation or dissemination
• Clinical scholarship/Scholarship of application: Systematically applying and evaluating knowledge in practice settings with documentation and dissemination
• Scholarship of integration: Synthesizing knowledge across sources and disciplines to create new interpretive frameworks

Contemporary Relevance

Integration scholarship addresses critical challenges in modern healthcare 5:

• Guideline proliferation: Multiple overlapping guidelines create confusion; integration scholarship synthesizes recommendations into coherent strategies
• Complex interventions: Modern healthcare problems require multi-component solutions that integration scholarship can design and validate
• Knowledge translation gaps: Integration scholarship bridges research, education, and practice by making specialized knowledge accessible across settings