Commentary on: Fairbrother, G., Cashin, A., Mekki, T., Graham, I. and McCormack, B. (2015) Is it possible to bring the emancipatory practice development and evidence-based practice agendas together in nursing and midwifery? International Practice Development Journal. Vol. 5. No. 1. Article 4.

Imagine a future where evidence-based practice and emancipatory practice development work together in a way that is so seamless we don’t even have to think about it. Can you?

This is the vision as described in the article by Fairbrother et al., published in the IPDJ in 2015. In a bold move, the authors invite the reader to contemplate ‘the birth of a new healthcare phenomenon’, that of evidence-based emancipatory practice development (EBEPD). In the article, the authors offer a robust case for building momentum towards achieving a mutualised, evidence-based emancipatory practice development platform for knowledge and development in contemporary nursing practice. With detailed reference to a range of well-known, and often epistemologically polar opposite philosophical positions, the authors invite us to put aside our differences and work together to build a stronger evidence-based platform for emancipatory practice development work. In a creative and interesting manner, the authors refer to the yin and yang philosophy to illustrate how two opposites can complement each other, and they offer a diagram to illustrate the desirable fusion of EPD and EBP, working together and nestled within the concept of embodied integrated knowing.

This article by Debbie Roberts and Lynne Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 License.