Nursing is both a science and an art concerned with the physical, psychological, sociological, cultural, and spiritual concerns of the individual. The science of nursing is based on a broad theoretical framework; its art depends on the caring skills and abilities of the individual nurse.In its early developmental years, nursing did not seek or have the means to control its own practice. In more recent times, the nursing profession has struggled to define what makes nursing unique and has identified a body of professional knowledge unique to nursing practice. In 1980, the American Nurses Association (ANA) developed the first Social Policy Statement defining nursing as “the diagnosis and treatment of human responses to actual or potential health problems.” Along with the definition of nursing came the need to explain the method used to provide nursing care. Years before, nursing leaders had developed a problemsolving process consisting of three steps—assessment,planning, and evaluation—patterned after the scientific method of observing, measuring, gathering data, and analyzing findings. This method, introduced in the 1950s, was called nursing process. Shore (1988) described the nursing process as “combining the most desirable elements of the art of nursing with the most relevant elements of systems theory, using the scientific method.”This process incorporates an interactive/interpersonal approach with a problem-solving and decision-making process (Peplau, 1952; King, 1971; Yura & Walsh, 1988). Over time, the nursing process expanded to five steps and has gained widespread acceptance as the basis for providing effective nursing care. Nursing process is now included in the conceptual framework of all nursing curricula, is accepted in the legal definition of nursing in the Nurse Practice Acts of most states, and is included in the ANA Standards of Clinical Nursing Practice.