Question

• How is the concept of normality used in nursing? Example: a patient’s blood pressure is compared to a normal range of values and a financial planner may check the “average” return of a stock.

Answer 1

Normality is a behavior that can be normal for an individual (intrapersonal normality) when it is consistent with the most common behavior for that person. ... However, normal behavior is often only recognized in contrast to abnormality. In its simplest form, normality is seen as good while abnormality is seen as bad.

From normality derives both health and disease, with implications from the patient self-perception and doctor-patient communication, to the goal of medical intervention, health insurance policies and public health measures.. The proliferation of medical information, which is at the general public disposal, and the technological possibilities should keep pace with conceptual and ethical literacy. Alarming interpretations proliferate to the detriment of a balanced relationship with health issues. Diagnostics and therapeutics to achieve a given normality cause public instability worth attention, since this changing nature of health is unavoidable and normalizing parameters is not a solution to a balanced approach to life. Since there are tools to alter conditions the main focus should be in defining when to intervene.

Medicine is said to be the most humane of sciences and the most scientific of humanities. As a science striving for its objectivity and as a humanity in search of understanding, the concepts that lay the foundation for medicine must be clearly defined.

Normality has no consensual definition in medical literature. Not only the meaning varies, but also does the way it is conceptualized. In a simplistic view, it can have a naturalistic or normative approach. The former tries to identify what the term means for the ones who apply it, independent of value judgments. The normative as a more constructive intention, where the meaning is established by the theorists.