The very current international debate regarding the construction of professional role-identity in nursing involves analysis of context, competency, reflection, and theory. PROBLEM. What most of the literature shows is that nursing continues to struggle with inherited moral and behaviorist constructs in which essential is in opposition to essentialist caring values and remains part of a convoluted argument. Each of these two types of caring either figure or pre-figure in the future of nursing, economy of healthcare reforms and international change. Therefore, how nursing's past is mapped is germane to any current or future understanding of nursing in a multidisciplinary workforce. METHODS. The paper takes a theoretical position employing a nursing model, newly constructed by the author, to examine 21st century nursing. The model seeks to gain an informed knowledge of practice to develop a means of evaluating nursing within its social context. The model is called a social purpose model. This article provides a historical mapping of the concept of new nursing from when it was utilized in another context nearly 18 years ago to now in the United Kingdom. This article includes a critical discussion of nursing's purposeful future to make the discussion more meaningful from an international perspective. Cartographically linking the past to the present is important, but if there is opportunity to define and identify the profession for a purposeful future, appropriate tools are needed to do so. FINDINGS. This article offers a social purpose model in which a subjective, objective, and contextual ideal of what nursing is today can be explored critically and applied both to the student and mentor's practice arena. CONCLUSION. To extend a definition of nursing for pragmatic purposes, nursing needs to be defined in relation to the social context within which it is practiced. Theory and experiential evaluation must inform action as a working adjunct to governmental documentation, taking 21st century nursing from the desktop to the bedside.
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