The body in nursing discipline: an essential to link the four concepts of the metaparadigm

How can we teach and practice nursing, develop knowledge and reflect on the founding principles of nursing discipline without explicitly considering the essential place of the body ? After addressing the nursing science disciplinary metaparadigm and its four central concepts, we suggest this theoretical proposal be expanded to include the body as a fifth concept, demonstrating its appropriateness in linking the other concepts, namely the person, health, environment and nursing. In this perspective, different readings of the body are thus proposed. In the variate configurations displayed, they appear as ways leading to specific microparadigms and from which it becomes possible to identify the nature of nursing and caring, as well as the types of knowledge that are useful to be taught within the nursing curriculum.