Concept Analysis of Autonomy in Nursing: A Review Study

Currently، nursing authorities، researchers and scholars closely criticize nursing researches and documents based on its philosophy and methodology، hence the concept development is considered as one of the most important approaches for nursing knowledge development. The present study was a review that used Walker and Avant approach for the autonomy concept development. This approach is one of the methods of conceptualization and concept development that eventually resulted in the theory development. In this study، the autonomy concept was searched by using of the autonomy keyword، in valid data bases، PMDR and INLM. Then all of the related articles reviews and themes related to the autonomy keyword were determined. There are various definitions of autonomy in nursing literature and the concept has been in evolution until now and based on professional literature review، many concepts including themes of self governance، ability، capacity، competent، self-controlling، freedom، critical reflection and decision making have been extracted. Discussion & The concept of autonomy is an abstract and complex concept and its meaning has intervened with other concepts. Formal analyzing of the concept could result in appropriate usage، semantically.